


A Death Too Many

by Calamander



Category: overwatch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampires, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Overwatch - Freeform, Vampires, Widowmaker's husband deserved it, Widowtracer, abusive relationship tw, blood kisses, morally questionable Mercy, slightly adjusted backstory for Widowmaker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-09-18 03:10:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9365072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calamander/pseuds/Calamander
Summary: Tracer should be dead. You don't just come back to life after being killed - at least not without Mercy's help. And yet, here she was, chained down to a chair, alone with her worst enemy in some godforsaken windowless bunker. Her bullet holes have been healed, but at a cost that only Widowmaker and Reaper know.As her thirst grows, it's becoming increasingly clear that only one thing will sate it.





	1. First Death

Tracer sat in the middle of the room, chained down to a solid iron chair. A blindfold covered her eyes, and a ball gag kept her from speaking. Anger rose in her chest, a hot firestorm. It wasn't the chains or her capture that stung. She'd been shot down before when she couldn't phase her way out of it. It was part of the job, and Angela was always there to rez her back. That always felt strange. Her body, twisting back together, rejecting the damage, the bullet holes, the slashes. For a brief moment, it felt like she was on fire. Like now.

But Angela wasn't there for her this time. Tracer thought back to the night before. She'd been on her own, and ambushed. Left for dead. She had reached out for a past that she could phase back to, but that pathway was closed. Her ability was quirky in the worst ways, she thought at the time. But if she had one thing going for her, it was that she never gave up.

Lying on the rooftop, collapsed in a growing pool of her own blood, she clung to that spark of life. She wouldn't die here. She couldn't. She struggled to pull herself forward. She dragged her body with her one good arm. Not dying here. Then, she felt a final shot. Both lungs, drowning. Her heart slowing, slowing. Stopped.

Then, out of the darkness, a hot spark. Barely conscious. The spark reminded Tracer of the fire she felt when being rezz'd. Was Angela here? She held on to that feeling in her mind, that unnatural sense of her body weaving itself back together, rejecting injury. Her eyes flashed open as she gritted her teeth against the pain. It was wrong. There shouldn't be pain. Her eyes weren't adjusting to the light right, but the person standing before her wasn't Angela. She was dark silhouette, long hair flowing in the wind, rifle trained on the bodies of those soldiers who had ambushed her. Unusual. Half mad from pain, all her brain would tell her was that this silhouette was death, and death had finally arrived for her.

 _"Putain de merde,"_ said a voice quietly. "Reaper, it looks like we have another _friend._ "

Tracer closed her eyes. She was breathing heavily, insides burning up. Something was different, wrong. The fire wasn't going away. She tried to cry out, but her mouth was parched dry even though her lungs were still filled with blood. Then everything went black.

\- - -

"You're out of the combat zone then?" Reaper's voice came out even scratchier over the headset.

"Yes," said Widowmaker.

"The target was neutralized?"

Widowmaker looked over at the short-haired woman slumped over in the chair. "She will be, soon."

A laugh crackled over the headset. "Enjoy yourself."

And then, silence.

She unhooked her headset from her ear, tossing it onto the steel table at the corner of the room. It rang out dully, but Tracer winced at the sound.

"Sound-sensitive now, are we?" mused the woman. "I wonder what else has changed." Widowmaker slipped off her gloves as she walked to the center of the room. Tracer could hear how close she was with each click of her boots against the floor. But she wasn't expecting to feel a gentle hand touch her face. Tracer froze at the touch.

"Ah?" Widowmaker's fingers slid across her cheek down to Tracer's lips. Tracer was too weak from her recovery to do anything more than shiver from the sensation. Widowmaker put one thumb against Tracer's upper lip, then gently pushed a bit further until she touched the fine row of her teeth. She slid her thumb along the line of incisors until she came to a the canine, just slightly sharper than it should have been. Tracer tried to jerk away from the hands, but the hold was firm and unyielding.

Tracer knew the hands that held her. They had fought so often, but yet were so soft. Even though her eyes were bound, she knew that if she could see through the blinders she would be looking into Amélie's predatory gold eyes. But why were the hands so gentle with her? It was all she could think about to distract herself from the gnawing pain that grew from deep within her. Her head hurt, every sound felt like a pistol whip to the head, and her teeth throbbed with odd pain.

With a smooth motion, Tracer felt the blind lifted away from her face. She prepared herself for a sarcastic glare from her nemesis, and drew back her lips in a silent growl. She stopped as soon as she saw the expression on the woman's face. Brow knitted together. Worry? Concern? Those expressions didn't belong on the proud, devil-may-care face in front of her. Amélie quickly steeled her face the moment she realized she'd let it go. Then, Widowmaker once more, she removed the ball gag.

"I see that you've awoken, Tracer."

"You had better fucking let me go," spat Tracer. Her voice was rough and harsh. "My team is going to be coming for me, and it will not go well for you when they arrive."

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, _ma chère,_ but they're not coming."

"The hell they're not coming. I have monitors in my system - Angela will know I'm still alive."

"That's just the thing, dear." Widowmaker said with a sigh. "You're not."

Tracer paused. The memory of the bullets pouring through her was fresh in her memory. Where was her heartbeat?! She held her breath, waiting for that sound.

"Or more accurately, weren't."

"Shh!" Tracer hissed. Widowmaker raised an eyebrow. Tracer set her jaw hard, focusing. Then, after a minute, there it was: a single heartbeat.

"It won't be enough to trigger the monitors," Widowmaker said, looking away. "What do you remember from last night?" she said, changing the topic.

"Pain," she spat out.

"Pain," Amélie said, "is the one companion you can trust."

Thinking of it made the heat flare up again, and she buckled over in the chair, shuddering as convulsions wracked her slight frame. The short-haired woman, unconscious, strained against the restraints with each motion. Amélie gave her space. 

\- - -

An hour later, her convulsions had slowed. Each breath was a ragged gasp. The whole time, Tracer knew that her watcher had never left her side. Sometimes, she'd feel a cool washcloth dab across her forehead. She kept her eyes closed - the light was too bright. Widowmaker casually walked over and closed the portable screen on the table. The room darkened considerably, and Tracer could open her eyes once more. Tracer, still chained to the iron chair, which was itself bolted to the floor, glared at Widowmaker. Her captor sat elegantly reclined in one corner of the room, one leg crossed over the other, as though she were a polite Parisian lady picnicking on the bank of a river. Hours passed as they regarded each other in silence.

"Haven't you ever wondered?" Widowmaker said casually.

"Wondered what?" said Tracer. She was so thirsty she could barely speak, but she desperately clung to the distraction of the other woman's voice.

"Wondered why I joined up with Reaper?"

Tracer coughed. "Because Reyes holds a hell of a grudge?" she replied.

Widowmaker laughed. It was unusually rich and deep, and Tracer found herself watching the line of her neck all the way down to the plunging neckline of her clothing, mesmerized.

 _"Tu as raison."_ She smiled her own sharp smile. "Yes, he holds a hell of a grudge. But you're missing the important part: a grudge about what?" That was the first time Tracer had noticed it. She'd always known that Talon had done some sort of experimentation with Widowmaker that changed her eyes gold and slowed her pulse, but for the first time she noticed the fangs showing in Widowmaker's coy smile.

Pain seared through Tracer's throat again. Tracer coughed.

"You're going to need to drink something soon," Widowmaker said. "I don't have anything but this." She took out a stiletto knife, sliding it across her forearm in a gliding motion. Beads of dark red blood formed at the line.

"You're mad!" Tracer croaked. Widowmaker pushed her arm forward towards Tracer, but the girl turned her head away in a panic. Something smelled just wonderful. The rational parts of her brain screamed at her, straining against the chains to escape.

"Not thirsty then?" Widowmaker held her arm up to slow the blood flow. Tracer had pulled herself as far away from the madwoman as she could. The chains creaked. Still, her eyes were drawn to the red cut. A single drop of blood began to make a trail down Widowmaker's forearm. "Shame," she said. Widowmaker's own golden eyes focused on her arm. Slowly and gently, Widowmaker drew her tongue along her own arm, taking in each droplet of blood with sensual care. Her arm knitted itself back together before Tracer's eyes.

Widowmaker then turned to Tracer. "If you're not thirsty now," she said as she regarded the chained woman, "you will be soon." Widowmaker had just watched Tracers' irises shift from brown to a hot shade of gold. 

\- - -

"Fine, I'll bite," said Tracer. "What was Reyes' grudge about? The whole Strike Commander thing never sat well with him, not to mention being killed - or not quite killed enough - in Switzerland. We all know he's turned himself into some kind of bloody monster to get his vengeance."

Widowmaker had been silent for nearly a day, waiting. She knew Tracer's curiosity would get to her eventually.

 _"Qu'est-ce que je peux dire?"_ She said with a patient sigh. "Turned himself..? Bloody monster?" she laughed. "Firstly, you should know that you don't look quite the same as before. There's... not a simple way to say this." Widowmaker stood back, then walked over to the table. It was metallic, polished to a nearly glass-like finish. Widowmaker casually tipped it over, as though it were made of cardboard. It clanged heavily against the concrete floor. Tracer winced, blinking back pain from the sudden noise. Then she looked up to see her own reflection glaring back at her.

The first thing she noticed were her eyes. They were the same gold color as her captor's eyes, shining bright against the darkened room. The darkened room... were there any lights at all? She glanced around, looking in the reflection of the mirror to see the back of the room. She'd assumed the lights were behind her. A pit of worry formed in her chest. No overhead lights. No table light. Not even a crack of light around the door. But she could still see fine? She gasped, and when her mouth opened she saw for the first time the reason her teeth had been feeling so strange. She licked her tongue along the rim of her teeth to be sure. It was true enough. Sharpened, knife-like fangs. Then her thoughts went back to Widowmaker's earlier remarks, and the way she had looked at her teeth earlier. Widowmaker had been checking for... for whatever it was had happened to her teeth? She listened for her own pulse again, and to her horror, it matched Widowmaker's unearthly slow rhythm. With disgust, she realized she could still _hear_ Widowmaker's heartbeat.

"I bet you're wondering if you're a result of some twisted Talon experiment, hm?" said Widowmaker, watching Tracer's expressions play across her face like a novel. "Like me, perhaps? Well let me clue you in on something: there's only one person that experiments in bringing people back from the dead, _and they aren't in Talon, darling._ You ask me why Reyes has a grudge? That woman - that creature - every time she brings you back to life, there's a cost. When she's not around to bring you back, your body learns to bring itself back. Reyes was just an early casualty. He's a monster now, pure and simple. Like me," said Widowmaker, broadly gesturing to herself, "and like you."

"I'm no-"

"And seeing what she's put you through, I plan to gut her myself next time I am in her vicinity."

Tracer swam through her own thoughts. A bloody monster. Her stomach clenched against itself.

"You haven't drunk anything in two days." Widowmaker reached for her thin knife again.

"No!" shouted Tracer hoarsly. "Just... just water."

Widowmaker stared at her in silence.

"Just water, please."

\- - -

She had drunk four bottles of water, held gently against her lips by Amélie. She could keep it down, but just barely. Tears of frustration stung in her eyes. Her throat was burning so harshly she could barely talk.

"It's not going to work, Lena" Amélie said softly.

"Shut up!" yelled Tracer hoarsely.

Amélie threw the fifth bottle to the ground, water splashing loudly against the concrete floor and wall. Amélie looked oddly hurt, but Lena didn't care. Her arms had healed, her lungs had healed, she had at least some kind of heartbeat. All she had to do was figure out how to get free so she could get back to Angela. She'd know what was wrong with her.

Widowmaker stared down at her captive with disdain. The silence rose between them, a frosty battlefield of wills. Then she turned away, then stalked out of the door. It was the first time she had left the room in four days.

It was only in her absence that Lena realized she hadn't slept. Neither, for that matter, had her captor. The sick feeling returned to her stomach. Whatever had been done to Amélie was being done to her. She was changing into her worst enemy. 

\- - -

When the door opened next, nothing came through but a mist. It slammed shut again. Tracer was weaker than ever, and hungry. Her eyes glowed gold defiance at the white-masked man who now stood before her.

"You haven't eaten," he said gruffly.

"You haven't let me." Tracer wished it sounded more convincing. The effort to breathe was a strain, and her vocal chords felt like a desert.

"You haven't let _her_ eat either." He crossed his arms. Tracer could feel something off of him, anger flowing steadily from him like mist from the ocean. "You're lucky, you know."

"Weird sort of luck," she whispered.

"Damn lucky. I bet you never even asked her what it was like when she went through it. Do you even know what happened?" He leaned down towards her face, investigating her expressions. "No, of course not. British Wonder Child, top pilot, bright face of Overwatch. But your greatest skill? Being blinded by that bright optimism of yours."

"Optimism isn't... blindness," she cut back, stopping to catch her breath mid-sentence.

"It is when it's wielded blindly," he replied.

"Didn't ask. I... know... her story." It hurt to speak more than a few words at a time. "Read her file."

"A file curated by Overwatch. And you said optimism isn't blindness?" Reaper said darkly. "Let's refresh our memory about what they claimed. Our dear Amélie, after being brainwashed by Talon, was saved and returned to her loving husband. Two weeks later, she kills him in his sleep, then returns to us. The next time you see her, she's a changed woman. Sound about right?"

Tracer nodded. She was pissed at him, but he was at least accurate.

"What if _we_ were the ones who were trying to rescue _her?_ Hm? After my own... incident, I woke up to who I am today. Torn apart, constantly reforming. It has a toll of its own in the form of the ever-gnawing hunger. Which, if looks aren't deceiving, is a hunger that you might now have some appreciation for."

Tracer had broken out into a sweat. She could barely focus on his words through the red haze of her thirst. She gritted her teeth, refusing to let him get a reaction out of her.

"I found that I had developed a sense for my own kind. But funny thing, it turns out that there are very few like Us. Except for one location, where I could sense that fiery reformation lurking dormant in every person in one distinct group. One group! How curious... and all served by one Overwatch doctor."

"Mercy..." Tracer whispered.

"Everyone Dr. Ziegler had ever brought back had traces of _it_ in their system. I may have been the first, but I could sense I wouldn't be the last."

"But Amélie... was not... in combat. Not rezz'd, not ever."

"Indeed," he replied, satisfied by Tracer's growing interest. "But she was married to someone Very Important. You all have monitoring systems in you, yes? So did she, but it was slightly different. Imagine, if she were ever targeted for assassination, would your dear Mercy be around to save her?"

Tracer looked down. No, she wouldn't.

"Amélie had a very special monitoring system in place, complete with a strong dose of _it_ , should she ever be attacked. Very top secret," Reyes said with a chuckle. "Even to her husband. But, if we - if Talon - could surgically remove that, she'd be safe from the change. Not to mention, we might have some way to manufacture an antidote."

"So you... kidnapped her?"

"Yes. But they got her back too quickly."

"But... you don't change... until you die..."

"Interesting, no?" Reyes had been pacing in the room. "Did you ask her how she died? Oh, it wouldn't be in her file."

Tracer stared at the ground. Memories of her own death swirled around. You had to die to trigger the change. Amélie had died somehow. But when?

"You didn't ask, did you." Reyes squatted down in front of her, eyes glowing behind his mask. "Her husband was a glowing, perfect member of society in public. But in private? He was always suspicious of her, judging. He was the slow danger, the quiet menace that she never told anyone about. He wielded his words like swords and daggers. When she returned, his mistrust took a darker turn. She'd been doing cleaning in his home office. How normal! But his suspicions told him she was our spy. They argued, and for the first time, violence struck."

"She... killed him." Tracer said.

"Quite the opposite," Reyes' smooth accent rolled off his tongue. "In his passions, it was he who killed _her_. Oh, to imagine the panic on his perfect righteous face - where to hide the body? Clearly, it would have been Talon who had murdered her. He tucked himself in while her body cooled on the floor. He slept so hard he missed the convulsions of her awakening. Amélie pulled herself back up from the floor a changed woman. She saw the notes, hastily written by her husband. 'I suspect Reaper will target my wife for elimination next,' and so on." Reyes waved his hand dismissively. "That steeled her resolve. When she saw him sleeping gently, like a baby, can you imagine what she thought? The sense of betrayal? She got vengeance for her own murder that night, Tracer. She stabbed him, as you read in her files, while he slept."

"Why didn't... he also... come back?"

"What her betrayal started, her bloodlust finished. It seems that there are certain deaths that even _it_ , whatever it is, cannot counter. After she stabbed him, she lost her mind to her thirst. Blood everywhere, can you imagine?" Reyes took a deep, slow, appreciative breath. He noticed Tracer's eyes glow slightly hotter. "Yes, you can, can't you. Picture her, crying from the pain of the betrayal, the pain of the change, and yes, the pain of the loss of her husband. She did love that bastard. She drowned herself in his blood, drinking deeply from the wound in his chest, until there was nothing left.

"She knows what your hunger is like. But you know nothing - _nothing_ \- about her own hunger." Reyes' voice took on a vicious edge. He stood up, striding to the door with slow, confident steps.

"You're still consuming blood, you know." He reached the handle. "You're just consuming your own." As he faded into mist and floated back out the door, his voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere in the room.

"If your optimism won't kill you, your stubbornness will."

\- - -

"What did he tell you?" Widowmaker hissed. Her eyes narrowed, staring down at Tracer. The pilot wouldn't meet her eye. "That bastard Reyes talked to you, I can _smell_ him on this room."

"He didn't... touch me."

"I know that. I would have smelled his brimstone on you." She said with a sneer. Then she noticed Tracer was barely moving her head.

"How did... you know... he even said anything?" Tracer's voice whispered, paper-thin. Something glittered on her cheek. Amélie frowned.

"Reyes made you cry. You never cry. Not even when you were ambushed, killed." Amélie walked towards Lena, putting a hand under her chin. "I'll shoot his kneecaps out from under him for it. I've done it before." Lena let out a barely-audible chuckle at the image. Then she looked full into Amélie's eyes, all mirth gone.

"Is it true? About your husband?"

Amélie froze. She looked at each line the tears made on Lena's face. Her heart clenched tightly in her chest. With slow movements, she wiped away each tear. Lena's skin transparent, and she took care not to be rough.

"There is... no need to cry on my behalf." Amélie said quietly, her anger ebbing away into some other emotion entirely.

"Is it true?" Lena said.

Amélie avoided her gaze for once.

"Yes."

Lena tilted her head, trying to look back into Amélie's eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't need your pity," Amélie said. "But if we don't get blood into your system, you really are going to die."

"I don't need it!" whispered Tracer.

"The hell you don't." replied Widowmaker. "You're too sweet for your own good" she whispered, then she leaned over and kissed Tracer lightly on the lips. Tracer sighed hungrily, sinking deeper into the kiss. Widowmaker probed her lips with her tongue until the lips opened, greedy for physical contact. Then Widowmaker bit down on her own lip.

Tracer's vision went white. She tasted hot copper, vibrant energy. She shook, grinding herself against the chair as her own tongue lapped up the droplets of blood from Widowmaker's soft lips. Each drop was euphoric. It was the first time in days that anything had cooled her burning throat. A moan escaped her lips. Her teeth felt strange, her head felt strange, but her body thrummed with hot desire. Widowmaker felt it, too, drawn in by the hot need of her prisoner. Against her own will, Widowmaker pulled away from Tracer.

"No," said Tracer.

"No what?"

"Come... back..." Tracer breathed.

Tracer's head fell forward against her chest. She was too weak to lift it, but she could feel her body coming alive again from the blood she'd just taken in. She felt the air move around her as Widowmaker leaned down over her, cradling Tracer's head against her. Tracer was hypnotized by the movements of blood beneath Widowmaker's breast.

"You want more, don't you?" Widowmaker said. Tracer couldn't help but notice yet again that she could hear the slow pulse of her heart. It was intoxicating. Tracer moaned again, needy. Each breath she took was a harsh rasping sound against the silent room. "If you want more, then just ask." Widowmaker let her head down gently.

"That's not fair," said Tracer.

"I'm waiting," said Widowmaker with a coy smile, tapping her finger against her lips suggestively. "Oh dear!" she said with mock-surprise. "I seem to have cut my finger against my own teeth." Tracer gasped involuntarily when she saw a drop of blood form at the tip of Widowmaker's finger. Her vision went white again with desire. Widowmaker reveled in it, watching Tracer come undone.

"I'll tell you more of my story, if you'd like... but first I need your help with something. My finger is dripping." Widowmaker held up her finger, just out of reach, with a cruel smile. After the taste of Widowmaker's blood on her lips, Tracer craved more. She lunged forward, straining against the chains.

"That's it, just a little bit more," said Widowmaker. The chains started to bend. With a snap, Tracer pulled free, grabbing onto Widowmaker's arm like a vice.

"You're such a tease," said Tracer angrily. She was shaking trying to hold herself back from tearing into the woman's arm, let alone her finger. She felt her own heart rate increase with desire. Slowly, Tracer leaned closer and closer, fixated like a cat watching its prey. Her tongue reached out towards the cut, unbidden.

Widowmaker luxuriated in the other woman's restraint. It seemed like an eternity before gently, with tenderness, Tracer's lips reached Widowmaker's finger. With slow care, Tracer's tongue lapped along the full length of the cut.

Widowmaker shivered with delight.

"But your gaze is honest even when your words - and mind - aren't, Lena. I can see what you want, but I need you to reach out and take it." Tracer's heart beat harder. What was she doing? Tracer pulled herself away from Widowmaker's arm. She looked down at her feet in revulsion. She was trapped behind enemy lines, but was not only making out with her enemy, but she was _lapping up her blood like a maniac_. Like someone from Talon. She shuddered. One part of her mind was at full war with the rest of it. Run away, it said. The door is unlocked. But you're so hungry, the other part of her replied. Tracer growled, pushing Widowmaker away. She bolted for the door, vanishing through it in a barely-visible flash of speed.

She was going to get answers, but she was going to do it her way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French translation:  
> Putain de merde = lovely French swearing of a sort commonly enough heard in heavy commuter traffic, or at least with the people I drove with.  
> Tu as raison. = You are correct.  
> ma chère = my dear  
> Qu'est-ce que je peux dire? = What can I say?
> 
> A Note from Calamander:  
> I'd always wanted to do something more with Widowmaker than "brainwashed into a badass."


	2. The Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking free from Widowmaker's clutches was the last thing Tracer expected to do. She'd been chained down, weakened from days without food. And yet, here she was, broken chains dangling from her wrists, racing to escape the compound before any more Talon soldiers could track her down. 
> 
> Unfortunately for Tracer, no amount of running is helping her escape her newfound thirst.

Tracer held her breath with each burst of speed that took her away from the concrete windowless room. Her mind raced just as fast. She tried not to think. Just escape. She was quicker on her feet than Widowmaker, but the sniper wouldn’t be so thoughtless as to be the lone guard. Widowmaker respected Tracer more than that. Then again, Widowmaker was haughty. Proud. Tracer brought a hand up to her lips. She could still smell Widowmaker’s blood. She shook her head, trying hard to get the images of the past few days out of her head.

Don’t think. Just run.

The building - the bunker - was a maze of flat gray concrete halls. Low-tech. Tracer paused at a corner. She was exhausted. Yet, somehow her mind kept going back to visions of Widowmaker offering herself to Tracer. _Don’t think about it._ She closed her eyes and listened for sounds of pursuit. These corridors might not be ideal for a sniper, but they would also leave Tracer with no cover. The thought drove Tracer back into a run. She came to a long hall, no doors on either side. She _blinked_ forward, covering the distance fast. Too fast. The hall took a sudden turn to the right, and Tracer stumbled, feet slipping out from under her as she tried to make the turn. Tracer collided against the wall, breath knocked out from her. Her legs buckled on impact and she collapsed against the wall like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

She clutched her abdomen, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. She pulled herself along the wall until she wasn’t in line of sight of anyone who might approach from the long corridor behind her. Directly in front of her, the corridor ended at an elevator door that was bolted shut from the outside.

She was trapped at a dead-end.

It wasn’t until she tried to get up that she realized something else was wrong.

Her limbs felt distant. “I didn’t hit the wall _that_ hard, damn it!” She stared at her fingers, willing them to movement. Two fingers twitched. _This is bad._ Her legs quivered from exhaustion. She’d barely run for two minutes, but it felt like she’d collapsed mid-marathon. Her whole body tingled with a numb pain. Then she noticed a trickle of something above her lip. Without thinking, she licked it away.

She flashed back to a few minutes prior, Widowmaker’s arm against her lips. The taste was the same. It wasn’t her own… blood. It was definitely Widowmaker’s. Without knowing how, she _knew_ , sure as day. A bit of feeling worked its way into her hands. Her fingers were once again under her control.

“Guess I get to crawl to safety now,” Tracer smiled grimly.

She turned her head towards the dead end. There was a small piece of hope: at the dead-end was an elevator door, long-since bolted shut. Some warning sign in French words suggested it was broken, and the shattered electrical control panel next to it confirmed it. The cracked screen had been dark for years. The doors would have been shut for just as long. Tracer cursed silently. She pulled herself forward, legs dragging behind her, towards the elevator. She couldn’t go back, but she couldn’t go forward, either. She clenched her fist. The broken chain jingled around her wrist like an absurd bracelet.

Tracer jerked her head up, footsteps echoing down the corridor that she’d just come from. A moment later, and she caught hints of their scent - there was a draft from the ventilation that brought it to her. Humans. The thought hit her in the gut, hunger tearing through her like a wildfire. She bit her teeth tightly together. Reaper was right about one thing - she hadn’t eaten. Not for days. Looking down at her now-useless legs, she realized the severity of that. She wasn’t just ‘hungry’ anymore. She was _starving._

Wait. _The chain._ Tracer brought her wrist up to her face. There was no damage to her wrists at all, but the chains that had bound them together had been snapped apart like they were made of pretzels. She’d been convinced that there was a weak link that had just broken, but no - The metal on each link was nearly a half an inch in diameter thick. The broken link was no different, just warped and deformed from the tension. As she looked closer, she saw that each of the links had been pulled out of their normal shape.

“What? Bloody hell...”

She stared with distrust at the metal. She tested it, checking the weight of it in her other hand. It was normal… but the damage to the metal wasn’t.

The smell of the approaching soldiers snapped her back out of her thought. Instead, it was all replaced with hunger. She licked her lips again. Her limbs were on fire with pain. She summoned energy to pull her legs beneath her. Kneeling, hands on the ground, head hanging from her shoulders, grimace on her face. She could see the thin veins stand out against the parched, white skin on her hands. The footsteps got closer.

“Shit.” she whispered hoarsely. “Tell me I’m not hearing goddamn _heartbeats_ , too.”

Tracer clutched her head in her hands, leaning her back against the corner of the wall closest to the elevator. She couldn’t block it out. Underneath the footsteps, the rich heartbeats rang out like drums. She could hear all five of them breathing. She could hear each rush of blood coursing through them. She broke out into a cold sweat.

They had to be Talon. Tracer looked around for anything she could use for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a pebble. Hand to hand? She had training, of course, but one unarmed against five armed were bad odds on a good day. She poked at her legs, trying to get them to feel anything other than the static buzzing of exertion. Nope. Today was _not_ a good day. She braced herself against the corner, pushing herself upwards with what strength she had left in her legs, then thought better of it. She had to save her strength.

If she couldn’t stand, she’d fight from the ground.

“-and when we find her, we finish her. Simple enough?” A man’s voice cut through the pain.

“But Widowmaker was keeping her here-”

Another wave of pain and hunger swept through her. Widowmaker. Just thinking about her, arm outstretched… this time, the pain made her vision flash white. She hugged her legs against her chest, curled against the wall. She had started to shiver.

“So what if she was keeping her here? She was doing it for her own sick pleasures as far as anyone can tell. We don’t do things _on a whim_ here.” The voice was clearly judgmental. “By all accounts, the prisoner should be half-dead anyway. Ah! Here we are,” he said, turning the corner. He shone the beam of his flashlight on her. She was curled into a tight crouch next to the broken elevator, staring hard at the ground. She winced, shielding her eyes from the bright light.

“G-get back,” whispered Tracer through gritted teeth.

“Looks like someone already did the hard work for us,” chuckled the man. He eyed the bullet holes riddling her bomber jacket. Some even tore through the metal device she wore on her chest. Her clothes were coated in her old, dried blood. She looked like she’d been through hell.

And listening to their heartbeats brought her back to hell again.

“Look at that,” he strode towards her, not bothering to draw his gun. “She’s shivering!”

“I said,” Tracer stared hard at the concrete floor, eyes blazing, “get _back_.”

The other four guard had a laugh. They ignored the squeak of metal underneath her fingertips. The front man continued towards her with a confident swagger. One step, then another.  
Tracer could feel each microsecond. The sharpness of her teeth, the throbbing _need_ of her hunger - no, she had to stop fooling herself - her _thirst_. She remembered the burst of strength she had when Widowmaker had taunted her with her own blood. She just had to wait for the right instant…

He stood just above her. He stared down, then smiled in amusement.

“Look boys, she’s got Widowmaker’s eye-s-” At that moment, Tracer launched herself at him. She could feel herself timeslip into the leap, crossing the distance even faster. She watched his eyes flare open in shock as she drove him into the wall. His head connected with the cement, blood pouring from the wound. Tracer breathed in the scent, licking her tongue against her teeth. All hope of restraint lost, her mind fell back on the last piece of training she had: _survive_.

She grabbed his wrist as he reached for his gun. He moved in slow motion. With inhuman speed, she pulled his wrist to her mouth, fastening on like a viper. Her fangs pierced his skin easily.

Blood poured onto her tongue, and she drew two deep swallows. When the blood wasn’t flowing well enough, she bit down again, and harder. _Survive_ The other four were just turning their bodies towards her. She didn’t care. She felt _wonderful_. Her legs sparked like electricity was being sent through them, and her grip was stronger. The man beneath her stopped struggling.

When she couldn’t get anything more out of him, she let him drop down, sliding down the wall like a ragdoll.

The remaining four had not drawn their weapons. They stared at her. Blood dripping down her chin, eyes golden and predatory. Their hearts quavered - no training could have prepared them for that piercing, hungry stare. The deepest parts of their minds were screaming at them to _run_. The parts of their brains that remembered being hunted, remembered being prey.

When the first one turned to run away down the long hall, the remaining men followed quickly after.

Tracer nearly couldn’t stop herself from running them down. Seeing them flee made her own blood sing.

“That’s right! Run you bastards!” She shouted after them.

Then the smile slid away from her face. She wiped her arm across her lips. The fresh blood made a messy line on her jacket, but it would blend in with the old bloodstains soon enough. Tracer looked back at the man on the ground, and at her hands. Her skin looked healthy again, no longer paper-thin. And her body felt _good_ , truly good, for the first time. It felt better even than it had been before she’d been shot down, back before she was…

Slow panic started to rise in her chest. She’d given in. Listening to their heartbeats for less than a minute was enough to drive her over the edge. Another part of her mind said _they were the enemy_. An enemy? _My friends have heartbeats too._

“Stop it, Tracer. Focus!” she muttered.

She knelt down, considering picking up the Talon soldier’s weapons. No. Weapons can be tracked or hacked. She turned back to the elevator. She glanced at her “bracelets.” The metal bolted to the door looked just a bit… flimsier to her eyes now. Walking towards it, she cracked her knuckles.

“Zarya, if only you could watch this…”

She pushed her hands between the metal doors, and they screeched in protest. Bolts stretched, strained against the metal piece secured over the doors as she pried them apart. She heard the sound of more men running up the corridor, many more. Backup.

She strained against the metal until there was _just_ enough room for her to slide between the doors. It was a good thing she didn’t need light. Even in the pitch black, she could still somehow see the metal ladder. She leapt across the chasm of the elevator shaft in one bound, releasing the doors. They slammed back together. She could clearly hear the men cursing on the other side, unloading rounds onto the door.

The ladder in the elevator shaft ascended upwards. Tracer began to climb.

\- - -

Reaper and Sombra sat on a rooftop, waiting. Across the alleyway, a heavy brick warehouse sat in ruins. Sombra’s virtual console lit up with an alert.

“One man down,” she said in Spanish. “Ok Reaper? I respect you, and all that… but seriously, she’s not getting out of there alive. There are at least 25 soldiers down there, probably more if you count the ones who are no doubt off-grid. Talon’s big wigs are pissed. They already grilled my ass to find out if I knew anything about this whole abduction thing.” Sombra smoothed her hair back with one hand. “Look, I know how obsessed you are with Overwatch, ok? But you know what? The last thing we need is to have their attention on old Overwatch agents, especially with whispers of illicit re-openings of some of Overwatch’s old bases. Talon’d _hate_ to have competition in supersoldiers again, after all.” Sombra raised an eyebrow ironically at him. When she got no response, she continued, “They’ll go back to _their_ regular agenda as soon as this chick is iced, which means _we_  get to go back to _ours_.”

“The pilot will make it out.”

“You wanna make a bet? You said she’d been starved for days. What skills does she have left? She’s a pilot, but it’s not like she’s got a goddamned _aircraft_  parked on that building.” Sombra waved an arm broadly at the roof. “She’s a decent shot, but does she have her guns” Sombra made gun gestures with her hands. She made an exaggerated dropping motion with the hand-guns. She tilted her head to one side with a roll of her eyes. “No, of course she doesn’t have her guns.”

Sombra walked back towards Reaper. “What’s left? Speed?” Her interface lit up again. “Ah, bad news, Reaper. She’s cornered. The hallway where she took down one of our guys is a dead-end. They’ve got the whole group converging on her location now.”

Reaper turned to look at Sombra slowly. They stared each other down for several very long seconds.

“Ok, you know what? You’re so positive about her getting out, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is.”

Reaper stood silently. Just before it looked like Sombra was going to say something, he spoke.

“5,000.”

Sombra laughed.

“You must like throwing away your money. 5,000 it is.”

Widowmaker’s grappling hook snapped into place near Sombra’s feet, and Widowmaker soared up the line, landing gracefully beside her.

“Talkative as ever, Sombra.”

“Hey Widowmaker,” Sombra switched to English, leaning in towards her aggressively, “next time you to do a pick-up, maybe _don't_  kill off all the Talon soldiers around your objective? It makes them suspicious, mm?”

“It was necessary.”

“It was _stupid_. You’ve got more skills at your disposal, but all you can think about is that damn rifle of yours.”

“If you wanted it done your way, you could have done it yourself.”

“Look,” Reaper held a hand out, pointing. “There.”

The door on the rooftop of the other warehouse slammed open off of its hinges. A flash of blue light, and Tracer was gone. The blue timeslip shadow faded quickly in her wake.

Sombra furrowed her brows. Reaper positively radiated smugness, which only made Sombra angrier.

“Widowmaker, you wanted me to do things my way? Fine. We do ‘em my way. Tracer’s out, so we go to plan B. If the Overwatch rumors are true, she’ll go to one of their underground bases eventually.” said Sombra. Sombra narrowed her eyes one last at Reaper before cloaking herself with invisibility.

“Of course,” said Reaper.

Widowmaker started to follow, but Reaper put a hand on her shoulder.

“Let Sombra take over. We’ll need your skills later.”

“Do you really think you can stop me?”

“Not unless I had another death wish.” Reaper sighed. “My knees still sometimes twinge now and then.”

“Then leave me be. I won’t interfere. I’m just taking some time off.”

Widowmaker vanished out of sight over the edge of the building.

\- - -

Tracer knew exactly where she needed to go once she was free, but something nagged at her. If Reaper and Widowmaker wanted to manipulate her, the story they told was a good one. For a long time now, Widowmaker seemed to show up anywhere Tracer went. It was more than coincidence. If Widowmaker had been observing her during that time, she’d know that Tracer’s greatest weakness was how much she cared.

Well, that and her chronological stabilizer.

Tracer looked down at the metal bracing her chest. In spite of the bullet holes, it was apparently still functional. She’d have to tell Winston - he’d be so proud of its durability.

_Oh, Winston_. Maybe he’d know what was going on with her, even if Mercy was compromised… no. She trusted Mercy, too. Mercy’d saved her life on countless occasions.

Tracer had taken cover beneath an underpass. She stayed as far away from heartbeats as possible. The ocean of sound from the vehicles drowned out the other noises. The few homeless omnics who lived there eyed her, but asked no questions. The crushed remains of what looked like an omnic lay scattered to one side of the road. She tried not to stare. Its head had been bashed in. Tracer looked back anxiously at the other omnics, but they were lost in their own thoughts.

Tracer climbed up into the girders of the underpass, laying down on an iron beam. From below, she was perfectly hidden. The iron didn’t seem cold at all, which was wrong. It was the same temperature as her skin.

The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach returned. Widowmaker didn’t show up properly on thermal vision. Neither did Reaper.

She’d assumed it was camoflage.

“No. This is just my mind playing tricks on me. I still haven’t eaten anything - and I would _kill_ for some fish and chips right now.” She nodded her head confidently.

Mercy - Dr. Zeigler - would always make sure she ate well, for the sake of the mission.

She trusted Mercy. Then again, the brainwashing story had always seemed a bit, well, _off._ Tracer thought back to when she asked Mercy about it after reading Widowmaker’s file. She had to know everything she could about the assassin, even then. Tall, mysterious, deadly - and always crossing paths with Tracer.

“It is a good question, Lena,” the doctor had said. “Since it is wildly unethical, we have no research on neural reconditioning. That said, I can share what I know so you are better prepared to neutralize her when you see her in the field.

“Neural reconditioning is, in effect, a complete brainwashing. The personality of the person you used to know is truly gone.” Dr. Zeigler walked over to look down at her desk pensively. She took a deep breath, then sat down. She gestured to Tracer to sit down across from her. “You should know that I saw it firsthand. Since you came to ask me, I presume you also read in her file that I was her doctor for her annual physicals. In other words, I knew her from before the brainwashing. She came to all the Overwatch parties, never straying more than a few feet from Gérard. She was a quiet, devoted wife. I knew her smile, and I remember her laughter. Lena, she meant the world to Gérard.

“When she vanished, you can’t imagine how it shook us. We’d lost Reyes and Morrison only a few months earlier.” Dr. Zeigler sighed, watching the gulls soar by outside the window. “When we rescued her... it was a symbol of Overwatch’s success over our enemies. We would not let them take another of our own.”

Tracer had listened without speaking. She waited for the doctor to continue.

“But we didn’t know that they already had. Amélie had, in all truth, already died. The person who came back was just a puppet of Talon wearing Amélie’s skin.” Emotions moved behind Dr. Zeigler’s eyes. “We didn’t know until after it was too late.” Dr. Zeigler walked back to Lena with a serious expression on her face. “Remember this: if _any_ of us are captured by Talon, consider us compromised. Don’t listen to the person, don’t trust the person, and don’t let them get away.”

In the privacy of the cellar, she’d actually gotten to talk to Widowmaker for the first time. She couldn’t shake what Dr. Zeigler had said about her - a puppet wearing someone else’s skin - and had watched her carefully. There should have been no emotions, according to her briefing. Widowmaker should have been no more than a human machine.

But in the cellar, Tracer had seen true, raw emotions cross Widowmaker’s face. The woman was still quiet, as Dr. Zeigler had observed during her civilian life. The assassin might have taunted and teased her, but there was no physical violence. Even when she had complete control over her, she’d never actually forced her to do anything. Widowmaker even brought her water when she asked.

And what about Talon? Was Widowmaker truly loyal to them? Tracer remembered watching the Talon operatives sniped one after the other the night when everything went wrong. What kind of organization would use their own perfectly obedient puppet against their own soldiers to save an enemy combatant?

“Focus on the facts, Tracer,” she said to herself. “Widowmaker took down Talon soldiers. She saved my life, then told me she hadn’t, because I’d already died. She acted almost disappointed, like it was too late.”

“Then, the Talon soldiers who’d come after me in the building were upset with her. If she was really a mindless tool, they would have talked about her like a mindless tool.” Tracer stared at the cement ceiling of the underpass. A pigeon landed at her feet, then startled with a flurry of feathers when Tracer moved. Even the building she was in didn’t seem to be Talon-operated. It was just some abandoned brick building.

“Talon’s soldiers were upset about her decisions - her whims. Puppets do not have whims.”

She stared at iron of the bridge. The sky outside was a dark slate, thick with clouds promising a slow and miserable rain later that evening. She knew where she _should_ go: back to Overwatch’s new headquarters, and fast. She should go back to Mercy and Winston and get to the bottom of things.

But all the same, her thoughts nagged at her and gave her no peace. When darkness fell, she’d made up her mind. She jumped down lightly from the bridge, landing behind a makeshift tent structure from one of the omnics. The darkness provided some cover for her and the ruined, bloody outfit she wore. It wasn’t raining yet, but staying near the roar of the road made the other human noises bearable. She may not have access to her files, but there were always other ways of finding the address.

She’d go back to Overwatch eventually, but in the meantime, she had to go somewhere _else,_ first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP random Talon jerk, we hardly knew ye.
> 
> (Sidenote: This story was originally going to be three chapters, but the pacing is working better with four chapters instead. I've adjusted the number with this update.)


	3. Answers don't always come easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracer's free, but now she needs some answers before the bloodlust - and possibly Talon operatives - get the better of her.

As it turned out, finding a simple address was going to be harder than she thought. Her chronal accelerator hummed unsteadily. She placed a hand over it. Tracer closed her eyes and took a slow breath. That was the only tech she had left. 

The rush of the highway, the occasional blare of the horn punctuating the constant noise, accompanied her slow walk. She looked down at her jacket. At least in the dark it didn’t look quite so… bloody? Tracer laughed. No, she absolutely couldn’t go into any area with people. Anyone would call the cops, and with all the surveillance she didn’t want to get back on Talon’s radar so soon. Or Overwatch’s, she thought. So: no talking to people. No going to populated areas, no bars, no clubs, no libraries. That left her with few options.

“First things first,” said Tracer, “where on earth am I?”

Before she’d died, she was out scouting on a mission near Frankfurt. Now, she was clearly not in Germany. The license plates were all wrong. Wherever she was now was clearly The Bad Side of Town. It was usually closest to the highway. Not many humans lived here. It was mostly omnics, like the ones she’d seen already. 

Tracer looked ahead. The highway carved space between high-rise buildings on either side, all in terrible repair. When she’d been up on top of the warehouse building, she’d noticed mountains on the other side of the large lake at the edge of the city. The heart of the old town was to the north, as evidenced by the rather quaint rooftops that were several centuries older than the rest. 

How could she get the address? All she had to do was find some way to interface with a news network’s archives. Just a connection to any server would be enough - even a library should do it. But libraries wouldn’t be located anywhere nearby, and again, there would be people there. An omnic wouldn’t need a library when they could just interface directly with whatever literature they might want. Unless they wanted to read? She knew of at least one that might have that sort of an inclination.

She was lost in thought, standing and gazing upward, when a voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Qu’est-ce que tu cherches?” a hoarse, metallic voice called out from the shadows. 

“What? Listen… je… je ne parle pas…”

“A brit! Hah!” a trio of blue eyes lit up from the shadows, and an omnic revealed herself from under a pile of rubble. “You’re… rather far from your home turf.”

Tracer stepped back. There was an unsteadiness to the omnic’s movements, a certain jerkiness that made Tracer wary. The omnic was a tall factory model, lean and fast. The acceleration on them was supposed to be legendary; assembly speed was always a high goal. Tracer noticed the modified right hand: each finger had a five-inch blade welded onto it.

“Sure, yes, yes I am!” Tracer said cheerfully, all the while watching the omnic with a careful eye. 

“Then I’ll ask again: what are you looking for?”

. . .

Widowmaker perched, hidden on the ledge of a building overlooking the highway. She was scoped in, gripping her rifle steadily in her cold hands. She’d hit targets that were much farther away, but the wind was picking up in unpredictable gusts. 

She might not have Sombra’s tech savvy, but Widowmaker was excellent at spotting her prey.

. . .

The omnic hadn’t believed her.

“You have no way to interface? You want to look at the news? Don’t even know what city are you in?” The omnic’s laughter rang out. “Why should I trust your feigned ignorance, goldeneye? You, who wandered directly into my home. You bring shadows and darkness with you. And that,” the omnic pointed with a bladed hand pointed at the patch sewn onto her shoulder “marks you as more than just a civilian.

“I remember the omnic crisis, child. Your kind did not do pretty things.”

“Humans weren’t the ones-”

“I don’t mean _humans_.” 

Tracer froze. Did this omnic know more about her? About what she was? Before she could ask, she saw the omnic twitch her bladed hand, snapping it open like claws. The trio of eyes glowed, and the omnic slashed towards her. 

Tracer blinked out of her line of attack, skidding to a stop on the other side of the highway. 

“Please! Just let me borrow your interface for a minute!” She held out her hands. “I’m not trying to-”

The omnic closed the distance before she could finish her sentence, raking her claws out again towards Tracer. This time, she ducked and rolled. Can’t blink too often. Too much strain. She braced the chronal accelerator protectively as she unrolled into a sprint. The omnic leaped, landing directly in front of her. 

“You’re quick!” the omnic laughed again. “You do seem to want this badly!” She tossed a small device - a handheld interface link - in one hand. The living machine tucked it into her belt. “Why don’t you come and get it!” The omnic slashed again.

Tracer danced backwards, hands still up.

“No, it’s not a trick, I swear! Wait-” Tracer saw a red dot appear on the omnic’s forehead the minute she stood still. The omnic dashed towards Tracer just as a bullet slammed into the wall behind where the omnic was standing.

“Not a trick, when I’m getting shot at?” The omnic hummed ominously, another set of blades snapping into place along her legs.

Tracer couldn’t look up and back toward the shooter, not with the omnic bearing down on her. 

The omnic snapped back into action, grabbing Tracer’s arm in one hand while trying to slash with the other. Tracer intercepted the bladed hand. She caught it by the wrist. Metal warped against her fingers. Tracer didn’t think. She pulled, and with a brutal tearing sound of metal, she ripped the metal hand off of the omnic completely. 

“What?!” The omnic shouted as Tracer kicked her off. The omnic grabbed at the metal stump where her blade hand used to be. Black mechanical oil dripped from the wound.

And then, a second shot rang out.

The omnic stood stock still. The three lights of her eyes brightened, then flickered out. With immeasurable slowness, the omnic fell.

Tracer counted the seconds pass.

When she turned around, she could have sworn she saw a figure vanish from the top of the building several blocks away.

“Wait, several blocks?” She rubbed her eyes. It was more than several blocks away. Far more. A mile away? But the figure had been so clear in her vision.

“Bloody hell, I’m a monster,” she mumbled, throwing the claw-hand back into the rubbish pile with disgust. She scooped up the interface link from the ground.

“Of course you are,” replied the dying omnic. “You’re with Overwatch. _Your kind._ ”

. . .

When the adrenaline wore off, there was nothing left behind but a sense of emptiness. Even though the omnic had attacked her first, it felt different than the Talon soldier. This was two deaths within the span of a few hours.

Tracer wasn’t quite sure how she managed to do it, but she managed to stop the - for lack of a better word - bleeding of mechanical fluid from the omnic. She sat the omnic up against the wall. She had a moment of silence. 

If the omnic hadn’t been shot, what would she have done? Torn it apart?

She sheepishly picked up the clawed hand, setting it where it belonged next to the omnic’s body. She covered her up with a long sheet of cardboard, holding it in place with some rocks.

“I’m sorry,” said Tracer.

With a blink, she vanished again. 

She stopped sprinting when she came to a burned-out shop at the base of one of the high rises. She crawled inside the window. Sunrise was coming soon, and she was exhausted. She crawled underneath the checkout counter. It wasn’t really needed, since your account could be automatically debited by however much merchandise you left with, but it was a traditional carry-over from the olden days. 

Tracer flicked open the interface link. It lit up the area underneath her counter in a pale, green light. A few flicks and a tap later, and she was exploring through the news archives. It was a high-profile event, after all. 

“That can’t be right,” she whispered. 

The address was in this very city. 

But why had Widowmaker taken her here?

. . .

She slept hard through the day. Shadows danced across her eyes as she dreamed. Bullet holes, being consumed by fire, dying, coming back to life, dying again. Tied down to a chair, the soft caress of a hand against her cheek. The whisper-soft touch of a pair of dark lips against the nape of her neck. Her slow heartbeat speeding up as she felt her handcuffs click open. Then she was laid out on a bed, held down by those same hands. The silky dark hair smelled faintly of lavender, and Tracer held her breath as the other woman worshipped her body, tracing each inch of it, memorizing it. Tracer tilted herself into each tantalizing touch. Then, she opened her eyes.

Tracer woke up like a truck driven into a cement wall. She groaned, and even that was painful. She felt the movement of each bone against the next. Every motion was grating. She took a breath, uncomfortably aware of each rib shifting underneath her skin. Her eyes were dry. She rubbed a hand against them, then regretted it as the salt from her sweat got into her eyes.

She cursed miserably. 

The thirst was beginning to nag at her again, as well. She tried not to think about it. She also tried not to think about the dark-haired specter haunting her dreams.

She pulled herself out from under the counter with a grimace, looking down at the interface link in her hand. She’d get answers soon.

She was close enough to the Metro. Tracer had no money on her - all of that was inaccessible without her own connection to any international banking system, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to light up her account with activity. Thankfully, this subway system - like so many others - had a long and illustrious history of non-paying riders. She lept over the turnstile. A little red light illuminated, and then went out again. Funny. 

The subway ride was shorter than she’d expected. No one was riding at this hour - she’d slept long past sundown. A single man slept at the far end. His heartbeat was weak and irregular, distinctly unappetizing. Still, Tracer stumbled out of the train car when it reached her stop. 

People. Humans. The place stunk of them, though none could be seen. Tracer held her arm against her nose in disgust. Disgust largely aimed at herself.

She ran out into the arms of the night, nearly weeping tears of joy at the open air. 

She was close. This was the nice part of town. Rivers ran through it like veins, dark in the night, lined with gorgeous buildings hundreds of years old. There was only a small walkway between the building and the river. She walked along this waterway until it forked. A handsome building, ancient and stone, sat proudly in the middle of the fork. Tracer mused that it had almost the features of a face, with a turret for a nose. 

“I’m clearly getting delirious,” she said. 

She was grateful no one else was visible on the streets. They would have thought her to be strung out on drugs, possibly dangerous. “No, definitely dangerous,” Tracer affirmed. She wished she couldn’t feel the raw scratching in her throat. She reached over to the edge of the waterway, leaning over the railing. The water was unusually calm. The shadow of her silhouette barely rippled on its surface. A wave of dizziness overtook her, and she grappled with consciousness. She came back gasping, clinging hard to the railing.

She had another two miles to walk, and she’d be there.

Of course, that’s when the rain started.

“You couldn’t have waited another few hours, hm?” Tracer shouted angrily at the clouds. Rain spattered into her mouth, adding insult to injury. She made a quite rude gesture at the sky in response. There was inherent power in cursing, and it did seem to make Tracer feel a small bit better.

Having properly told the sky off, Tracer started walking again towards her destination. Misery be damned, she had places to be. Tracer couldn’t slip out of her jacket without also taking off her chronal accelerator, so she didn’t bother trying to use it as a makeshift umbrella. She walked in the rain stoically. 

The building loomed ahead of her sooner than she’d expected. Luxury apartments, with a very expensive door. She slipped into the alleyway next to it. She whispered gratitude at the presence of the fire escape along the side. She climbed up the metal rungs of the fire escape, footsteps silent in the constant patter of the rain. 

Memories of the mystery shooter returned, and she glanced around her. She felt exposed. A shiver ran down her spine when she pictured Widowmaker watching her from afar. A dangerous thrill, and she quickly tried to get the thought out of her mind. If anyone was following her, they’d have needed to do it close up and personal through that subway, and Widowmaker was the sort of person who would sooner be caught dead than be on something like a subway train. She grinned wryly.

This was it.

She had reached the apartment she was looking for. The window was dark, though she could see the room inside well enough that it bothered her. It was like light didn’t matter anymore. 

She could see in the dark now.

She could hear people’s blood in their veins.

And she was getting thirsty.

Tracer gritted her teeth together. She knew there was only one thing that would fix it. Something else bothered her. Although the soldier had been… filling… he didn’t hold a candle to Widowmaker. Her… her taste was purely electric. 

Did Widowmaker make her what she was? Did she turn her somehow?

Tracer tugged at the window. With a small _pop_ , the latch gave way and it rotated open silently. Tracer lowered herself into the apartment. She pulled the window closed behind her.

She was dripping wet. She shook her hair out, slicking it back and out of her face with one hand. Tracer then started to explore. The “police line - do not cross” cautioned her not to enter the bedroom. That wasn’t where she planned to go anyway - the smell of human blood still tainted that room, although a smell of something else lingered underneath it.

. . .

Widowmaker clutched her chest when she watched Tracer wipe her hair out of her eyes. Her heart was beating more rapidly than usual. She’d often felt that way watching the brunette, but this was something else.

“Why would you go here?” Widowmaker whispered, pleadingly. The place brought back terrible memories.

. . .

The kitchen was incredibly fancy. Crystal champagne and wine glasses sat in their display cases. A few pieces of fine art decorated the walls, white and black. Nothing had been touched, even though it had been years since the incident. 

No one rented the apartment since then.

Tracer checked each room for the more common security devices she was aware of. Everything was deactivated. None of the rooms were remarkable in any way. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, but still she continued looking. Something would catch her eye.

Sure enough, something did.

A single sculpture of an angel with a scythe had an unusually bright gloss to it. The brass was not uniformly aged. Parts of it had been handled. 

“And I’m still catching this without any bloody lights on,” Tracer muttered. She reached her hand out, pulling on the scythe delicately. A tall piece of art, a black-and-white abstract painting of cubes and spheres, rotated out and away from the wall.

The smell of blood hit her hard.

It was Widowmaker’s.

She had hit the floor before she recognized what had happened. The scent of it was overpowering. It rolled past her in waves. She had no choice but to lie there, gasping, until the air had dissipated. 

Lifting herself back upright, she could see inside the room. It was a study, lined with bookshelves and filing cabinets. Her knees wobbled under her. The smell of blood was old, and Tracer was embarrassed at how much it affected her. 

Tracer entered the hidden office. She gingerly walked around the great, dark stain on the white carpeting. Books pulled off walls. A light smashed. There was clearly a struggle.

An envelope opener, shaped like a miniature sword, lay on the carpet. Flecks of dried blood remained on its surface.

Her anger grew. She remembered Reaper’s words. The woman had been the perfect wife. Everyone thought he was the perfect husband, too.

She turned back to examine the rest of the room. The mahogany desk. A journal open on the desk, with an entry mentioning suspicion towards the clandestine operative known as Reaper. It was written in a smooth, confident hand.

Gérard. The bastard.

In her mind’s eye, she watched the fight unfold. The woman had fought back, throwing books at her attacker. She pushed him back into the lamp, which shattered. It cut him - Tracer could smell the foul undertones of his blood on the lamp shards - and he grabbed the letter opener. Then, he stabbed and slashed until the woman couldn’t get up again.

Tracer was shaking. How much more of Widowmaker’s file was a lie? And did Dr. Zeigler know about it?

Tracer hovered her hand above a bloody handprint. A handprint that she could see as well as smell. The fine-boned woman lifting herself back off the floor. A drop of blood on the pages of the journal, made to frame Reaper for the murder. Tracer could see her leaning over the pages, reading the lies.

Wait. What if this was just Talon manipulation? Tracer leaned close, sniffing for any hints of the odd brimstone-scent of the old hispanic man. No. He had not been here. Hers were the only footsteps that had walked on this carpet since Gérard - and a no-longer-dead Widowmaker - left the room.

Now Tracer followed the path of the woman’s footsteps leaving the hidden office. Fastidious as always, it seemed that Widowmaker had removed her bloody shoes before closing the secret room and walking across the white living room carpet and into Gérard’s bed chambers. Tracer looked at the small heels, sat delicately in the corner by the bookshelves next to the secret door. Sure enough, they would have left a trail. They were soaked in blood.

“Were you ever such a housewife?” Tracer mused.

Then she noticed something outside of the window. An area about the size of a human where the rain… wasn’t.

Her heart froze in her chest. Someone was there. 

She was being watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the by, if you're of the Tumblr persuasion and like vampires/Overwatch/Hellsing and occasional updates about my writing, I am there as [TheWritingCalamander.](https://thewritingcalamander.tumblr.com)
> 
> (Update note: in spite of the current hiatus, I do have the next chapter in progress. I plan to have it up in the next week or so, around the mid 2nd week of July.)


	4. Flickers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Tracer goes off to solve a mystery, trouble is never far behind.

Widowmaker had kept a sharp eye on the brunette through her scope. The rain was miserable, but at least she had cover. She’d lost Tracer for almost forty-five minutes after she disappeared into the metro. There was no way for Widowmaker to follow her there. She felt an unusual knot of anxiety form in her chest.

Logic took hold again, reassuringly. At this time of night, there was only one metro line running. Widowmaker took a guess at the direction Tracer would go.

She soared over the city, the soft hiss of the grappling hook as it deployed, caught hold, and then pulled her up. The first stop. She watched. She waited. A pair walked up from the underground station, and that was it. Widowmaker nodded, then flew on to the next station.

Widowmaker took greater care as she reached the heart of the city. There were always eyes. She focused herself, listening for the rustle of people in their apartment beds, sound asleep. She would re-route when she saw the occasional person smoking idly on their balcony, glassy-eyed.

Her timing was more and more delayed she got deeper into the city. Some of the buildings were new, and frustratingly grapple-proof. She managed to make her way up to the belltower of a new cathedral. It was a beautiful homage to the old classics, complete with flying buttresses and stained-glass windows. The walls were even made of stone, which was a godsend. Her hook caught on the window ledge easily, lifting her up above the roofline of most of the other buildings. 

Widowmaker scanned the streets below. She had a good view of one of the rivers below, her own personal Venice. No matter what else happened, it was always home. That still did not help the distinct feeling that Widowmaker had missed whichever stop that Tracer had gotten off on. 

Then it started to rain.

Widowmaker craned her neck, looking up the tall line of the cathedral’s right bell tower. Shelter. Her grappling hook hissed again as it was deployed, and a moment later she landed on a dusty ledge. Rainspouts had never lost their whimsy, she thought. She was close to one that was shaped like an omnic with horns.

“You couldn’t have waited another few hours, hm?” Widowmaker snapped her head around at the shout from below. The unmistakable British accent. The brunette stood across the river, one hand on her hip, the other hand pointing at the sky like it had just disappointed her.

“Looks like I’m not the only one caught in the rain. Lucky me,” Widowmaker hummed. 

Widowmaker’s pleasure was soon replaced with unease. Widowmaker had enjoyed the battles with Tracer, a game of cat-and-mouse that was thrilling in a way that not much else was anymore. The Tracer she watched below her was struggling under a new weight. She gripped her rifle hard. Tracer had stopped, clinging to the railing overlooking the river. She started to collapse against the railing, legs failing beneath her as though a slow landslide was carrying them away.

Widowmaker couldn’t let herself forget how… new Tracer was to this. She was barely a week old, and remarkably well-adjusted at that. When Widowmaker had been that old, she’d been a wreck. She thought back to that night where she awoke, vengeance burning in her heart and a new hunger ravaging her veins. She’d demolished anything in her path, including her erstwhile husband. She escaped. There was not much she remembered from that time except hunger. It took Reaper two months to find her. She’d been blinded by her new thirsts when she first woke. By comparison, Tracer seemed almost… chaste. She held herself back, even when Widowmaker offered herself freely. Tracer was iron-willed, that was certain. It made her want to tease the brunette, to make her give in and let go of herself. Widowmaker thought back to how her pulse had jumped when Tracer ripped free of her restraints, driven on by desire and hunger. Widowmaker could have held her there in that moment forever. And then, just when she thought she had her, Tracer surprised her again.

On one hand, seeing Tracer escape was infuriating - a betrayal just when she thought Tracer had understood what she was now. But on the other hand, wasn’t that independent spirit exactly what she liked about her? It sent a new thrill down her spine. Moreover, Sombra had underestimated Tracer, expecting her to fall to a handful of Talon mercenaries. But Tracer had risen out of the building, victorious. Widowmaker could hardly believe it, herself. When she had been that new, standing would have been out of the question, let alone managing to escape solo from armed guards. Something else was stirring in her heart, a small voice cheering her on as she fought through her enemies. 

Widowmaker had watched her for long enough to know how scrappy Tracer was, but that voice nudged her again when she watched the old street omnic pick a fight with Tracer. She’d heard of that omnic - the Dervish - and her homicidal tendencies. Anyone familiar with the area did. And yet still, that incredible strength shone through again: she watched Tracer rip the bladed hand off of the omnic bare-handed. Even if Widowmaker hadn’t finished the omnic off, would Tracer have been able to take it down on her own? Widowmaker smiled to herself. Perhaps she shot too soon.

And there, Tracer was pulling herself back up onto her feet again. Stable. Calm. Purposeful. All of the things that made Tracer a compelling enemy while she was with Overwatch made her even more compelling now. But then - wait - what was that? Widowmaker squinted, mistrusting her eyes. It had looked like Tracer had started to fade out of reality, but then snapped back. It didn’t look like she had noticed. Her chest harness had sputtered just a little.

Tracer was moving with direction and focus. She had hoped that the pilot was just going to explore, or better yet, contact Overwatch so Sombra would get tired of the girl and leave her be. 

“You bring out the huntress in me, ma petite.” Widowmaker blew a kiss down towards Tracer. She would follow her to the ends of the earth, just to keep the hunt going. 

As Tracer continued on, Widowmaker observed from her tower. She flicked open the small interface link - hard earned from yesterday’s fight - consulted a map, and kept moving towards the last place Widowmaker would have suspected.

Tracer had found her old apartment.

Widowmaker gritted her teeth together. 

Cursing quietly, she closed her visor and looked through the scope. Sure enough, Tracer was climbing the fire escape. She looked inside the window cautiously, then pushed her way in. It should have been impossible to pry the window open like she had. Tracer was operating under a different definition of “strength” since she’d awoken. 

Her emotions darkened. She hadn’t seen her old “home” in years. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and her slow heartbeat quickened. Looking into the room, it was though nothing had changed. The same carpet, decor, simple paintings that she had enjoyed in her other life… and the new addition of police tape that hadn’t been taken down.

But none of that mattered. There was only one detail that caught her like a punch to the gut.

Someone had closed the door to the secret room. 

She remembered waking up vividly. That night was seared into her mind, with all the vengeance that fueled her soaring back to life as she watched the short-haired girl retrace her own steps. But most importantly, she’d left the secret room open. Gérard had other skeletons in his closet, and Widowmaker had delighted at the thought of his secrets becoming public. 

She’d always wondered about the lack of press coverage on the secret room, let alone the fact that they considered her “disappeared” rather than brutally murdered and disposed of. There was enough gore in that hidden room to ensure no doubt as to the fate of whoever had been attacked there. 

Nothing there would tell Tracer the truth of what happened, unless she found the room.

Suddenly, a vibrant skull icon appeared in her vision.

Widowmaker cursed, pulling the visor back. Sombra must be close to the line of her fire for her rifle to be acting up like that; that was a new “feature” in the programming of her weapon now apparently to prevent “friendly fire”. Sombra must have been really bothered by being visible through Widowmaker’s visor. 

The thought of Sombra being so close bothered her. She had no real reason to want Tracer alive aside from convenience, and Widowmaker knew that Tracer could make herself _incredibly_ inconvenient. She would have to get closer to keep an eye on what was happening.

. . .

Tracer stared hard at the window.

Don’t rush into a fight you haven’t sized up, she thought. This person is invisible. Who knows what other weapons they have. How did they get here? They must have been following me. But how? Did they follow me from the factory?

Tracer’s thoughts rattled off in her head. 

Then the silhouetted shape began to move, leaning into the window of the apartment. 

_Shit!_

Without the rain creating an outline, the person vanished into nothingness. Tracer looked around for anything that she could throw. She was stuck in an apartment with an invisible assailant. Books. She grabbed the first book she could find, tearing out pages and scattering them like confetti. Nothing… nothing… there! She threw the book at the one place where the paper scraps didn’t seem to fall. The book hit an invisible wall with a thump, then landed on the floor.

“Hey, chica!” a woman’s voice echoed, darting around behind Tracer. “Stop with that.” A solid hit smashed into Tracer’s metal chest brace, sending her staggering forward. Time jittered, then stabilized once her stabilizer stopped sparking. “You ready to listen yet?”

Tracer whirled around, aiming her fist at the source of the sound. No contact. Footsteps shuffled back, and Tracer grinned when she looked down. 

“You’re standing on carpet,”

“What?”

Tracer landed a punch to the mystery woman’s gut, and heard a satisfying “oomf!” 

“Hey hey HEY, I said stop it, alright?” The woman turned off her invisibility cloaking, holding her hands up. The woman had smooth, dark skin, accented by extreme tech biomodifications. A thick mane of violet hair flowed down one shoulder, and she batted her eyes with a hint of malice.

“You’ve got two seconds to explain why you were watching me.”

The woman’s eyes glittered.

“One second.”

The now-visible woman sighed, rubbing her stomach where she’d taken a solid blow. “First off, you’re not the one calling the shots - I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because someone like you deserves to know, and Widowmaker’s not gonna be the one to tell you after you broke out of her little cell.”

“You’re with Talon,” Tracer said.

“And you’re with Overwatch.”

“So why should I trust you?”

“Oh, but you shouldn’t, babe. You know that.” She put one delicately manicured finger to her lips. “But luckily you don’t have to trust me. You can figure some things about me just by using your brain, girl.” The woman winked.

Tracer thought back to punching through the metal doors on the warehouse. This woman should have been pulverized by her last punch.

“What _are_ you?” Tracer asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Hmmm, now there’s a good question from our detective!” She clapped slowly, sarcastically. “And I’ll throw it right back at you: what are _you?_ ”

Tracer crossed her arms, refusing to answer.

“You’re probably hoping your own medical team can figure that out, I bet. But… you know I’m just thinking out loud here… but how much would they trust someone who’d come back from the dead after being abducted by Talon? Think they won’t notice the eyes, or the teeth? You’re smart, Lena Oxton.”

“How the HELL do you-”

“Know your name? Talon databases have most of the juicy details on you ex-operatives.” She laughed. “And your Overwatch databases? Do you even _know_ how much data they collect on you?” 

“You’re a hot-shot hacker, then.” Tracer said dully. “Fab.” 

“You know what? Maybe Widowmaker just got tired of your shit and let you go on purpose.”

“Maybe your _face_ just got tired of your shit.” Tracer muttered under her breath.

The woman started to laugh. “You know what? Nothing makes me more glad than picturing _Serious Business_ Widowmaker have to deal with that mouth of yours, so I have a little present to give you. My little thanks. You might not need it now, but one day you’re going to want to get into one of those precious Overwatch bases of yours - and yes, I know they’re not as ‘closed’ as rumors say - and you’re going to _not_ want to get fired at on sight. You’ve changed, chica, and they’ll know it. I’ll give you one chance, one opening, to get in undetected so you can meet with whatever person of your choice. My card,” The woman held a small hexagonal piece of thin plastic marked with shimmering circuitry, “will let you contact me. Once, and once only.”

Tracer stayed warily back.

“You gonna figure out who covered up poor sweet Amélie's murder now? Have fun with that. A hint: it wasn’t Talon.” She winked back into invisibility.

“And one last thing,” the darkness whispered, “that stabilizer of yours isn’t going to hold out forever. Hope you’ve got a backup plan!” The mirthful voice disappeared back out through the window, and Tracer was alone again in the apartment. The hexagonal card sat on the windowsill. 

“No way I’m trusting this not to be bugged,” she muttered, leaving the card behind once she tucked it away behind a painting.

Tracer looked out the window, but the rain had stopped. Her nose picked up a familiar scent, wafting from a distance - lavender.  
. . .

I’ve lost her, thought Widowmaker. By the time the skull symbol had disappeared from her visor, Tracer was long gone from the apartment. She left her tiny perch for the better one in the bell tower of the cathedral. Clouds hung low in the sky, and thunder crackled in the distance. She liked the bell tower. It was new, and all sealed off to make sure the riff-raff didn't get up into it. Which, to her, meant privacy. 

“Looking for someone,” said a familiar voice.

“Tracer?!” Widowmaker turned on a dime.

“Nice pirouette,” she grinned. Then, the grin turned to a sharp grimace. “But… please.” She gripped her sides. “I’m very thirsty, and I… I sorta used the last.. of my energy getting up here. I don’t think… I trust myself walking back home.”

“You looked for me?” Widowmaker asked, voice hushed.

Tracer winced. 

“Yeah.” She sighed. Widowmaker seemed different. Darkness haunted her eyes, and suddenly all Tracer wanted to do was to reach out and comfort her. Unfortunately, her hunger pangs took over, curling her up again into a tight ball.

“Ah,” Widowmaker said, distant again. “Of course.” Cool rejection washed across the woman’s face as she removed the stiletto from her boot cuff and started to pull it across her forearm. Suddenly, a hand grasped over her own, stilling the movement and stopping her blade.

“I’m not just here for that,” she whispered. Widowmaker looked up at her, stricken with flickers of emotion across the mask of her face. “I just…”

“You visited that apartment. Why?” 

“I had to know.”

“Know what?”

“Know which story was full of holes. None of the newspaper coverage mentioned the goddamned horror room in that apartment. Did the police even know it existed? What about Overwatch?” She removed the knife from the pale woman’s hand. “There are lies in this mess, and I’m going to get to the heart of it.” The woman’s hand trembled. She took her hand in her own, giving it a firm squeeze. Tracer had found the room. She knew.

“I left that room open when I left.” Widowmaker said with a frown. 

Then Tracer collapsed into her. “Who… closed it… then? Ugh…” She was ice cold in Widowmaker’s hands. “That said,” she wheezed, “could I also... have a drink?” Tracer’s eyes were glowing with need. "Please?" Widowmaker cupped her chin, then held her tightly against her chest. 

“Yes,” she breathed. With that permission, Tracer shakily dragged herself up towards Widowmaker’s collarbone. That slow pulse drew her forwards, enticing her. Then, she paused.

“If I hurt, if this hurts,” she whispered hoarsely, “just tell me to stop.”

Widowmaker pulled Tracer to her neck, smelling the soft vanilla scent of her hair. She pulled her collar aside delicately. Tracer was as weak as a kitten, and could barely hold herself up against Widowmaker. She backed against a wall, then slid down to a sitting position, gliding Tracer smoothly into her lap.

“You need to reach out and take what you want,” Widowmaker said. “Or someone else will take it from you.” She hugged the shivering woman tightly. “Now, just tuck yourself against my collarbone. Once you’re there, listen.” She held her breath. “Hear the flow? You can feel those vibrations through your teeth, too. Graze them along my neck. Slowly, slowly. Then, when you feel the pulse through your fangs, I want you to bite down.” Tracer’s breath hitched. Her fangs were poised over the spot, but she couldn’t do it.

Widowmaker rotated Tracer around. Tracer wouldn’t look her in the eye. 

“Will it hurt you?” Tracer asked, voice barely audible. “I just don’t know if I can do it without it hurting.”

Widowmaker cradled Tracer, then wordlessly brought her own wrist to her lips. With a delicate motion, she bit down. Blood began to flow from the wound readily, even as she pulled her hand from her mouth. Tracer was entranced. Widowmaker lifted her wrist to Tracer’s mouth. First, Tracer drew her tongue gently across the wound. Eagerness caught hold of her, as she started licking faster and more feverishly. 

“Good,” said Widowmaker, pleased. “Now, you don’t even have to bite me truly… but you _do_ need to get your fangs into my skin before it heals up.”

Tracer looked up into Widowmaker’s eyes. She was flushed, and beautiful in the night. Tracer couldn’t resist any longer, and sunk her fangs gently into Widowmaker’s bleeding wrist. It was like she had plugged herself into an electric socket, burning hot, sizzling down every nerve in her body until she was gasping for air. This was different than the Talon agent. There was nothing but brutal efficiency there, but here? She found a beautiful rhythm of Widowmaker’s heartbeat, a gentle motion that ebbed and flowed and guided her as she drank deeply. And she felt a different… tightness? Around her fangs. Widowmaker’s skin was trying to heal itself, putting an irresistible pressure on her. She shuddered. Widowmaker’s breath started coming in heavier, gasping with each pull from her. She could have held herself against Widowmaker, worshipping her wrist the entire evening, but she pulled back again. She looked up at Widowmaker, worried. 

But the look in Widowmaker’s eyes was one of pure, hot need. “No, keep drinking!” she whispered. A few tendrils of hair snaked their way around her face, and her pupils were wide. Her cheeks were remarkably flushed, bringing color out from the otherwise blue toned skin. 

“Thank you, but I think I’m doing a little better now-” but her voice cut off as her chronal accelerator sparked, sending her flickering in and out of reality. “Except for that!”

“Your time-machine is broken?”

“Ye--” she flicked back, “eah” She was standing, then crouching, then gripping the rafters of the tower. “This isn’t th-” she disappeared, then reappeared next to Widowmaker “-the worst it’s been.” She vanished again, then popped back a few feet away. “And IT’S not a time-machine, I am. Basically.” She seemed to steady herself again in this reality, then took a few breaths. “This fine device is a stabilizer. An anchor to Here and Now.”

“Tracer,” Widowmaker began.

“Don’t worry about me. And please,” Tracer reached out to her with a smile, “You can call me Lena,”

Just before Widowmaker could take her hand, a strong spark came from her chronal stabilizer. Tracer yelped, clearly hit by the shock, then vanished in a haze of blue.

Widowmaker stood in shock. 

Unlike the last few flickers, Lena was truly gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter summary: Widowmaker loses Tracer, finds Tracer, loses Tracer, then Tracer finds her, and then she loses Tracer again.
> 
> It's good to be back. Thanks for reading!


	5. A Doctor's Burden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Tracer's harness sparks out, she vanishes, leaving behind a growing number of people trying to track her down. 
> 
> But who's truly on her side, anyway?

“The hell?” Sombra’s eye twitched as she looked down at her tracking map. The little orange icon started glitching out, vanishing and reappearing like static where it had once been a simple dot sitting somewhere in the cathedral.

“Come on, little tracking chip!” She hissed in Spanish. " _God damn this thing, it should be working!_..."

“Bad evening?” Reaper sifted into place next to her.

“JESUS, Reaper, a little warning?!” Sombra jumped.

“Heh, so I _did_ find that last tracking device you hid on me,” His gravelly voice hummed with amusement.

“Listen, you smirking motherfucker,” Sombra started, then glanced back at her screen. “I’m… we’re gonna settle this another time.”

Reaper leaned over her shoulder, looking at the tracking map hovering in front of her outstretched hand.

“You’re suggesting that it isn’t supposed to look like that?” Reaper said.

“What do you think?” She replied scathingly. “It’s supposed to be a normal dot. Just normal, basic tracking. She moves, it moves. She stops, it stops. But this time, it’s like… like a firefly. On, then off. Unpredictable. The signal is here, and then not.”

“Is she using her Blink ability?”

“Not if she’s smart she isn’t. Plus, we both know she can’t blink like _this_. Her fancy-pants chest-harness isn’t all-powerful; it has a cool-down period. A very _required_ cool-down period, given how much she normally pushes the rules.”

A spatter of rain hit just above the alcove where they crouched. Reaper backed closer to the building, tilting his head down so the water would spatter harmlessly off of his hood. Sombra, still soaking wet from wandering in the rain, didn’t even bother moving.

“There’s just one answer, Sombra.” Reaper said solemnly after some thought. “Did you change the batteries before placing it on her?”

Sombra turned her head slowly towards him venomously. “Batteries? The hell kinda light-up tinker-toy bullshit do you think I craft all day long that takes BATTERIES, those things haven’t been useful in…” Sombra fumed, gripping her hands into fists, then took a few breaths. “Wait. You’re doing it again.” Sombra slowly ungripped her fists, talking herself back down. “You don’t actually think I use batteries in my tech, but you just can’t let an opportunity go to push every last one of my buttons.” She leaned in close to him, whispering, _”I swear to god, Reaper, you’d better sleep close to your guns or I’m painting them neon pink and modding them to shoot motherfucking sparkles.”_

Reaper cradled his guns to his chest with a small, theatrical gasp.

“You’re mocking me again,” Sombra growled, but she couldn't hide the small smile curling at the edges of her lips. She'd been having a long night, and she truly enjoyed the verbal sparring to get her mind off things. Suddenly, her ears piqued at an unexpected sound. Sombra leaned forward over the building. An incoming grappling hook shot upwards towards her face. She darted sideways, grappling hook just narrowly missed her face. The hook embedded itself in the alcove above them, and a violet blur whizzed up the line. The woman flipped up and over the balcony, landing delicately next to Sombra's position.

“She’s gone,” Widowmaker said, face void of emotion.

“Ah, JESUS MOTHERFUCKING… You too?” Sombra clutched her heart for a moment before switching to English. “Could either of you just accept that it is a hell of a lot easier to coordinate a mission when I can track the operatives? Look at this bullshit, Widowmaker. It says you’re still over here on this balcony back near the factory.” Sombra gestured to the map, then sucked in a breath. “Wait, she’s gone?” Sombra’s eyes scoured the map interface.

The orange dot was nowhere.

“So _she_ was blinking,” Reaper was suddenly dead serious.

“I watched her chest harness spark out,” said Widowmaker. “Then, she vanished. It was no volitional blink.”

Sombra’s fingers skittered over her interface, zooming, re-zooming, and calculating.

“Can you find her?” Widowmaker asked coolly.

“She’s our only ticket into Overwatch, babe. You’d better believe I’m gonna find her.” Sombra smiled. She may lie, but tech hadn’t. She was in better mood already.

_. . ._

The lights flickered dimly throughout the outermost hallways of the old Overwatch facility. Broken windows, patched with rough boards nailed in place, barely let in additional light from the outdoors.

Winston paced the corridor slowly, clutching a photograph tightly in one calloused hand. Angela had given him the news. It was always Angela who delivered news like this.

He paused when he felt a hand reach up and touch his shoulder.

Winston looked over at the cowboy. McCree’s hat shaded his face, but there was a new exhaustion there that Winston was well acquainted with. They shared a moment in silence, listening to the wind.

McCree gave his shoulder a final pat, then turned and walked on down the corridor. It was only as he walked away that Winston noticed he was missing his spurs. His sarape sat limply over one shoulder, off-centered. Winston smiled sadly. With the funeral coming, more and more of the old faces were showing up at the hidden lab. None of those faces had any light in them.

We’ve lost the heart of Overwatch, Winston thought, and the rest of it’s just dying a slow death. He started to walk again. Without realizing it, he found himself in front of his new device in his lab. It hung, suspended, inside a glass cylinder. A fitting display for something intended as a surprise gift for his best friend.

He placed his hand gently on the glass, then began to cry.

_. . ._

_Rain, then sun. Darkness, then light, crystalline light, fractured into a thousand colors. Tracer tumbled, violently falling through time and space. Shards of reality tore at her, tore through her. She was there, but she wasn’t. There was no air, and yet she breathed the air of a hundred thousand universes._

_Her existence winked across time and space._

_She looked down at her chronal accelerator. It burned red hot, stinging her skin. She cursed without words, tearing at the buckles in desperation. She’d forgotten herself, forgotten her strength. The harness completely gave way with a snap, snatched away into a passing universe like a paper that has taken flight out of an open vehicle window. For only an instant saw a tiny purple hexagon affixed to the back of the harness._

_Her chronal accelerator! She reached out towards it, but it was too late. She screamed into the void. Hot panic filled her mind as time and space distorted further, flashing her into a fish-eyed view of realities that she passed through like an echo._

_Her anchor was gone._

_. . ._

In an Overwatch medical bay, Angela hunched over her equipment. Beeping sounds emitted from most of it, filling the large room with a quiet chatter at all hours. Her staff lay on the silver table in front of her, compartments open and ready to be refilled.

She walked over to the refrigerated cabinet of donor blood, pulling it open to retrieve a set of three red vials from the back. She snapped them into place along the shaft of her staff. Angela extracted a fourth vial, marked with a black hexagon, from a hidden location along the base of the refrigerated cabinet. She was running low. This vial, she placed at the very top of her staff. It, too, snapped into place, and Angela waved her hand slowly over the table. Each compartment clicked shut, following that command. Her staff responded to her movements flawlessly. It brought her satisfaction.

“Angela,” the cyborg stood silently in the doorway. The doctor turned smoothly, smile radiant on her face.

“Genji!” She rushed over to give him a hug. He was unusually immobile. Angela sighed, letting him go. Her smile faded. “You’ve heard the news about Tracer, then?”

He nodded. “My brother told me.”

Angela’s fading smile was efficiently replaced by a clinical mask. “She was out on a mission, then ambushed. But I was here. All I could do with all my equipment was just watch her vital signs.”

“It kills you when you can’t save someone,” Genji said, kindness in his tone. “I can see it on your face.”

“Of course it kills me!” Angela looked up at him, then calmed herself back down. “I’m responsible for them. All of them. This is why, after all of my research,” She waved her arm towards her files, her computer interface. “After everything I’ve ever done, all the sacrifices I’ve made,” her voice trailed off. She leaned her elbows on the table, bracing her head in her hands. The staff hummed expectantly. "You know that even more than I that I do everything in my power to save people.”

“And you have, Mercy. I’m right here.”

Angela stood for a moment, thinking.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” Genji tipped his head to one side. Something was clearly weighing heavily on her mind, so Genji held back his curiosity. If Angela had something to say, she’d get it out in her own time. Angela walked over to her chair, sitting down hard into it. She held a hand to her forehead, leaning into it. Then she looked back up at the cyborg.

“I may have watched her heart rate slow to a stop, but I’m not completely sure Tracer’s dead.”

Heavy silence settled between the two. Genji had leaned forward, metallic hands poised on top of the exam table.

“...what?”

_. . ._

_Dimensions warped around Tracer faster and faster, then suddenly - a strange pause. The movement around her ceased. Tracer blinked. Centuries of time had passed in an instant, and suddenly she realized she could feel something again._

_It was thirst._

_“Bloody fucking HELL!” she shouted. “Whole day gone tits up anyway, let’s cap it off with not even being able to get away from this fucking THIRST in this fuck-mothering dimensional FUCK.”_

_Cursing felt good, she decided._

_It made the floating feel a bit more purposeful, but the hunger really was coiling painfully around her stomach again, twisting it anytime she shifted too far forward - or backward - from the moment she fed from Widowmaker._

_Wait._

_She perked up. She really _could_ sense how close she was, in time at least, to that feeding. Don’t picture yourself floating, she thought suddenly. Picture yourself… flying. _

_Her stomach unclenched itself slowly as she flew back through the timeline towards the correct moment she’d vanished in the first place. She’d been in her arms. Had she been imagining the care that Widowmaker put into her? No. It was the same way she’d been on that first day. She wore her sarcasm as a shield, only setting it down when she felt safe._

_Tracer looked down at the droplets of Widowmaker’s blood that had dripped onto her jacket cuff when she last fed. Widowmaker was just… so giving. Tracer inhaled the scent off of the blood with a heady sigh. She was in the right time, or close to it. And that wasn’t all that had changed._

_The sky was no longer a whirling, nauseating mosaic of billions of Whens and Wheres. Now, it slowed to a gentle movement of just a few suns making their arcing motion across just a few earths below._

_I’m close, she thought._

_Thank you, Tracer thought, gently licking at the blood._

_The other suns faded out of view as _her_ sun, _her_ earth came into focus. Now, it was just one sun above, one earth below. She left the sun cross the sky and fade into a dark stormy night._

She realized she was out standing in a belltower, nuzzling into the smell and taste of Widowmaker’s blood on her jacket cuff, atoms vibrating in tune with that blood.

She fell to her knees in gratitude to be back on her own plane of existence again, only to fall on through the floor slightly until she tasted that blood again, re-aligning herself. She didn’t quite make it to exactly the right spot in time, but she was close enough. A certain giddiness rose in her chest. She’d made it back! Giddiness turned to laughter, which had her start falling through the floor again. She caught herself, then chuckled with a hint of maniacal glee.

“I made it!” Then, she noticed the burnt-out husk of her old harness, which had landed upside-down in one corner of the belltower. “And so did you, it seems.” She looked at the broken device. “And so did you, little spy.” she said, noticing the small purple chip which had been affixed to the back. “No way I’m putting _that_ back on. Might as well let our hacker friend think we’re practicing headstands up here or something.”

She turned around. The edges of things felt dangerously soft, like she’d go through them as though they were pudding if she wasn’t careful. But she was very, very careful tonight. She put her hand to her chin.

“If I can catch myself on purpose, interact with this plane on purpose… then what else can I learn?” Tracer mused, drunk on her own success.

It took hours of practice, and eventually Tracer just kept her bloodstained collar up close to her mouth and nose, but she managed to walk down the stairs. She didn’t trust herself to maintain a grip on the gargoyles like she’d done to get up, but even using a handrail was a bit risky when you occasionally slipped straight through it. Getting through the locked door at the top of the bell tower was an unusual problem. She couldn’t quite get the handle, always drifting just to the left or right of this reality.

“Come on now, you silly door,” she whispered, then tried to shoulder the door open. She braced herself for impact, but none came: instead, the world lit up around her as lightning struck the tower, and she sailed straight through the doors, tumbling down a few stairs before she caught herself on the handrail.

 _“Fuck! Easy does it, easy does it!”_ she whispered. The world stopped spinning, and the stair solidified under her feet again. Each step was like walking on a tightrope - the line between landing in this reality and a different one was terrifyingly thin indeed. The whole staircase project would give her several hours to think through her plan.

Firstly, she couldn’t rely on Widowmaker’s blood to bring her back. The woman was dark and enchanting, but also nowhere to be found. So what she really needed was to get to Winston. He was her best chance - her only chance - at getting a new chronal accelerator. She couldn’t blink forward through time at all in her current state. Backwards, either. The her own timeline was too fuzzy at the edges, slipping into several dimensions at once before collapsing again into this one. She paused at a window along the staircase, looking out over the dark city. Lightning shot across the sky, close to the tower. Tracer gasped as the windowsill she’d rested against suddenly gave way, and her skin tingling as she felt the hair raise up on her arms.

She scrabbled at the stonework, half inside and half outside the building.

“Bollocks!” she hissed, scrambling to pull herself back inside. It was too late - she could see the gargoyle to her left, her only handhold. She grabbed for it as the rest of her body tipped backward out of the tower wall, drawn by the gravities of several earths.

By a miracle, she felt her hand catch on the gargoyle. She focused hard on it, focused on the feeling of the wet carved stone visage, scowling with fangs bared. Stay grounded, Tracer.

A crackle of thunder far in the distance. Her mouth went dry as she felt herself slip, then stabilize. She hazarded reaching her other hand up for more grip on the fancy rainspout. Even if it wasn’t slippery, she felt like the slightest nudge would push her back out of this dimension.

She needed to get to Winston if she wanted to get her balance, her anchor, back. But what about eating? She shivered. Eating was a problem. The hacker’s words haunted her, too. She looked towards her reflection in the mirror-like surface of the window next to her. Would they really trust someone who looked like this now? Another burst of lightning, close to the tower, lit up her face. She could feel time slow down as she looked at herself in that sudden light. Her eyes really did glow now. A hint of fang was visible between her parted lips. With the slowed movement of time, she could feel the very instant her grip on the reality of the gargoyle slipped, watching her hand slide on through it like smoke.

The fall lasted an eternity. She could see the light reflected in each raindrop that fell along with her, companions in descent. The roof was approaching, and Tracer worked to flip herself in a better position to land.

She only managed to get herself part of the way around before her leg connected with the rooftop. She could feel the shattering fracture rip upwards through her lower legs even as she tried to roll into the fall. She stifled a cry, rolling down the roof until she was airborne again, in freefall once more.

She closed her eyes just before contact with the ground. She could feel the sharp impact through her whole body, snapping her head hard against the ground. She lay, dying once more, on the grounds outside of the cathedral.

I can’t die yet, she thought, resolution starting to burn through her starting from her very core. She captured that feeling of being brought back to life, just like she had that very first night. The burning sensation increased until she had to bite herself in the forearm just to stop herself from crying out. Then, after a few convulsions, she was back together again. Ten minutes had passed.

Sweat had formed along her brow, and she took a few deep breaths. She turned her head to the side. She’d landed next to a gravestone.

She rolled her eyes. Rest in peace, indeed.

She laid there for a long time, letting the remnants of the burning sensation ease their way out of her system, and letting her thoughts flow once more. She held her hand up before her face. Shit. Unless her eyes lied, her skin was starting to shift to a blue shade with violet undertones. Did the ‘back from the dead’ healing do it? Did she need to - jesus christ - ‘ _drink_ ’ again to fix it? Shit shit _shit_. No, she thought, that sort of thinking won’t do you any good. She put her hand down, feeling the cool headstone by her side. Stay focused on the objective.

She could make it to Winston, convince her that she was still herself (somehow?), and that the bluish skin, gold eyes, and not-at-all-fanglike teeth were just an unfortunate coincidence and _definitely not_ Talon tampering (somehow? And she couldn’t even be sure of that), and then talk him into spending hundreds of thousands on another stabilizer/accelerator for her (maybe). What could possibly go wrong? Tracer laughed wryly. But first, she had to figure out how to get to Winston. She knew where the base was, but the Invisible Asshole was right when she said there’d be no way to get in without getting blasted to shreds by the automated defenses - and human defenses, she added soberly - now that she looked all the world like a pint-sized Widowmaker.

She also wasn’t going to make that worse by actually using Talon’s help to get in. Could she do it solo? It would be a risk, but she was no stranger to risk. And at least this plan didn’t involve anyone from Talon, unlike Invisible Asshole’s “generous” offer.

Then, her eyes flared open. Morning was coming, and she couldn’t let herself just be seen by people walking by.

She noticed a small crypt, like a stone house amongst the gravestones. A damned _convenient_ crypt.

“No, no and _NO_.” She said firmly. “It’s bad enough _dying_ in a cemetery, we’re absolutely not  _sleeping_ the day out here, too. ANYwhere but here.” She sat up, walking slowly towards the buildings nearby. Coffee shops, bookstores, antique stores… a few minutes of searching and she was running out of options fast.

“Well _damn_.”

Every last one would be crawling with people within a few hours, and she was dead tired.

She giggled. 

The giggle soon turned into raucous laughter. “ _Dead_ tired!” She wheezed with laughter, which echoed off of the tall buildings as she slogged back to the cemetery. “DEAD TIRED!” She wiped her eyes, tears of laughter streaming down them. “You know, on second thought,” She imagined the look on Widowmaker’s face when she told her about this later. She grinned evilly. “This ‘ere’s just too perfect to pass up.” Tomorrow night, she’d make her way to the new Overwatch lab. With both Winston and Dr. Zeigler there, she’d have her first shot at stabilization, not to mention getting some answers to her questions.

Then Tracer lifted the stone door of the crypt out of the way, slipping inside just as the sun’s rays started to warm the night sky.

. . .

“Tracer’s _alive?”_ Genji asked again. Angela stood up, poured herself a drink, then sat back down. She sighed, long and slow.

“Yes, I suspect as much. I went out to collect her body, then all of a sudden her monitor flashed a heartbeat. Slow and faint, and only once… but it was there. I flew all the faster to where her last distress signal was sent. The signs of the ambush were clear. She didn’t go down without a fight, though - Talon mercenaries were scattered dead in messy circle around one big bloodstain. But her body? Gone.”

Genji turned away in thought, pacing. “Footprints?”

“Yes, but not Tracer’s.” Angela took a breath. “They were Widowmaker’s. Genji… even _if_ she’s alive, Talon’s got her now.” Angela looked away, staring hard at the wall of medical supplies. The implications weighed heavily on them both. Her Valkyrie suit hung opposite her, framing her with wings when she turned and stood tall again. “And you know what that means.” Her face was inscrutable and distant, lips pressed together in a firm line.

“I’m invoking the Amélie Initiative.” She said.

Genji held her gaze for several beats. “You’re serious.” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Angela replied. “If you see Tracer alive, no matter what she says or how normal she acts, consider her compromised. She’d be far too dangerous in Talon control, now.” Angela stood again, adjusting the beakers in her autoclave, lost again in thought. “Tracer would die before being a pawn of Talon, Genji. She said so herself when I told her Amélie’s story. We’re just following her wishes.”

Angela looked at Genji, then looked away. “I’m sorry. I was planning to… take responsibility for this on my own. Involve as few of the old Overwatch agents as possible. Look at what happened when everyone knew about Amélie. Everyone else lived off of the hope - the false hope - that anything of her true personality was left after the neural reconditioning. Widowmaker used that against us, taunting us and continuing to demolish our morale to this day. Can you imagine that same thing happening to Tracer? The joy of Overwatch, getting used against us as a tool, just because some of us think there’s some way to get the old Tracer back?” She shook her head. “The fewer people who know, the better.”

“Does Winston know?” Genji asked quietly.

“No!” Angela rushed. “If I must tell him, then I will. But not yet. I haven’t had the heart.” She shook her head sadly. “It would be utter cruelty to let him suffer her death twice. And Tracer’s dead, Genji. Whether or not she’s able to move around on two feet, she’s dead, and it’s my duty and responsibility to bury her.”

The cyborg looked down to his robotic hands, unleashing three shuriken into readied position with a click of metallic joints. He clicked them back into place. He did it to clear his mind. After a while, he spoke.

“I will not have you bear this burden alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised I wouldn't leave you hanging too long after last chapter, and true to that promise you got a new one less than two days later. How 'bout that!


	6. Tout disparaîtra

Tracer awoke with a jolt. Anxiety rushed into her mind when she couldn’t feel the reassuring weight of her chest harness. She gripped at her chest instinctively, gasping out in shock. Any dreams she might have dissolved into pure terror. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. For minutes on end, she laid there rigidly, her lungs refusing to function normally. Sometimes, her body shook, alternating between feeling hot and feeling ice cold. She tried to breathe, focusing on the sensations around her instead of the odd feeling of her heart trying - and failing - to beat. What could she feel? There was the hard stone floor that she’d sprawled out on. The stale air pushing down on her. The crispness of her ruined clothes, stiff with days-old blood. The muffled sounds of traffic passing by echoed dully inside her stone sanctuary. Her head pounded, but somehow, the horrible sense of someone crushing her chest began to ebb away.

These sensations, _real_ sensations, told her something that the rest of her brain had not: she was anchored to reality, at least for now. She moved her hand away from the place where her harness used to sit. She closed her eyes tightly, groaning. When the anxiety left her, awareness of a general, all-encompassing pain resumed.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said to herself, holding a hand to her throbbing forehead. She slowly lifted herself up from the ground into a sitting position, leaning her back against the stone door. Exhaustion seeped into her bones. She pulled her knees up to her chest, curling tighter into herself. She kept hoping that she would wake up and the whole thing would be a dream.

Her stomach gnawed at her.

She curled a little tighter.

“Let’s stay focused,” she gritted her teeth through the pain, “on how to get out of this city...” she pulled herself to standing “...without biting anyone.”

Her memories floated back to a certain lavender-scented woman.

“Well, anyone but _her,_ ” she added with a tiny smile. Tracer’s conversation had been very rudely interrupted by her malfunctioning chronological accelerator. How much time had passed since she’d vanished? She flicked out her stolen interface for a quick peek. “ _Damn,_ only gone twelve days? New record.” It was good to be back, but even Tracer had to admit that her thirst was worse than ever. Thanks to her bloodstained clothes, the whole crypt reeked. Her blood, the Talon soldier’s blood, and even Widowmaker’s blood - a maelstrom of smells assaulted her senses. With each whiff, images flooded into her head, unbidden. Herself, falling to the ground after being killed in the ambush. The Talon soldier, twitching as Tracer held him down, drowning in the sensation of drawing the blood from him. Widowmaker, drawing a knife across her arm with a knowing smile playing across her lips. She shivered. The memory of raw energy flooding through her as she drank deeply, the relief, the pleasure, all of it was being played back over and over in her mind.

She had to get out of the city and away from people, _stat_.

She looked down at her clothes, pulling her lips to one side in an asymmetrical pout.

“Oh, don’t mind me, my dears,” she imagined herself saying to passersby, waving her hand casually, “Just came back from a fancy tour of a French slaughterhouse. Bought the “splash zone” tickets. Very niche.”

She laughed, and leaned her head back against the cool stone wall. “Yes, perfectly normal for Brits.” Then she buried her head in her hands, biting her lip in thought. She immediately regretted this, accidentally nipping her lip with her fang. “Oh hell, I’d forgotten about you bastards,” she said, bringing her hand up to her mouth. Somehow, she wasn’t bleeding. That’s good at least, she thought. Tracer swept her bangs back over to one side. It had been a while since she’d had lip piercings. She wondered what Widowmaker might think about them. Tracer smiled. She brought the cuff of the jacket to her nose, inhaling Widowmaker’s scent once more. She was back in her arms, cradled safely in her memory. Then her stomach twisted again, like a hot knife being stabbed straight through her. She choked on her air, gripping her knees to her chest until it passed. With a gasp, she peeled her jacket off. The less blood around her, the better.

Tracer looked at her jacket, inspecting the damage. The heavy leather was softer than it looked, a rich brown that looked good with her natural hair color. It had reminded her of her old pilot uniform, back before her accident. She loved it, buying it without a second thought. She even had a whole leather care kit back in her London flat. Her old girlfriend used to help her with it from time to time, massaging the products into the leather, humming quiet tunes. Tracer sighed sadly. Those days were long gone, now.

What to do about the jacket in the meantime? The bullet holes and blood stains would just not do; even if it wasn’t suspicious, the scent was driving her crazy. However, her jacket _had_ saved her, becoming the anchor to reality that she needed. A sudden rush of adrenaline shot through her system: if she set it down, would she lose her grounding? She started to feel her heart clench.

No, she thought. We can’t be ruled by fear. She’d faced worse situations as a pilot, and she wasn’t going to back down now. She tried to breathe, fighting the returning sensation of panic she’d had when she first work. She held the jacket out at arm’s length. Then, one finger at a time, she released her grip on the collar. Her heart should have been pounding, but it stood frozen in her chest. She closed her fingers back down onto the jacket, hard. She couldn’t do it. She hugged the jacket close to her chest. Then, with agonizingly slow movements, held it back out away from her. Her eyes flashed with resolve, and in a single motion, she let go. Fear and adrenaline slowed time, and she watched the precise instant it released dropped from her fingers. The jacket seemed to drift downwards, with the unreal slowness that made her wonder if it was even leather at all. She watched it crumple onto the floor, each fold of leather moving fluidly against the next. Then time resumed its quick pace.

She stared hard at her outstretched hand. It pulsed faintly in and out of reality, sometimes solid, sometimes faintly translucent.

 _That_ was new.

After the Slipstream accident, it had taken every ounce of resolve just to manifest a translucent echo of herself. More importantly, she had never been able to interact with anything. Touch, smell… sometimes even sound and were lost to her. But now, with no tech whatsoever, _and_ no physical anchor, she was somehow mostly _here_.

Underneath her jacket, her yellow-orange suit had been spared from the worst of the blood splatter. The suit featured self-healing fabric, too, so bullet holes, cuts, and scrapes wouldn’t be a problem. Tracer did a double-take. Her suit was self-healing, not self- _cleaning_. Her jumpsuit should have been absolutely coated in her blood. She’d have to think about that later.

She looked over at the two stone monuments within the crypt. “I hope it isn’t a bother, but could you watch this for me, loves?” she asked them kindly. She folded the jacket and placed it delicately in one corner. “I’ll leave you flowers when I get back.”

She leaned back to the door, listening. When the sounds of traffic ebbed, she slid the door to one side, then pushed it back into place. Interacting with objects was still difficult. Edges and surfaces seemed slightly unreal. Getting out into the cool night air sharpened Tracer’s senses, and the beginnings of a plan began to piece themselves together in her mind. She walked briskly. The thirst made her throat raw and dry, and she knew it was rapidly getting worse. Twelve days without drinking? She’d been alright when she was fully human in the Slipstream incident, but now it seemed she had to learn a new set of rules that came along with her new not-quite-human abilities. She tried to push it out of her mind.

All she had to do was make it back down into the subway.

. . .

Sombra’s face lit up. Her virtual interface sparkled in front of her, with one bright orange dot back in existence.

“She’s on the map!” She shouted into her comm link. “Right where she last disappeared when you had her cornered, Widowmaker.”

“What’s her status?” Reaper’s voice crackled.

“She’s staying put.” Sombra replied. “Her signal is stable.”

“Good,” said Reaper. “Update us if anything changes.”

. . .

The Swiss border was close; If Tracer had to walk, it’d take her the rest of the night. She’d do it underground in the subway system. Couldn’t risk being around people. Her arms and hands oscillated between translucent and opaque. She leaned against a sign while she was solid. She felt a slight electric buzz, as though she could feel where her atoms were almost-but-not-quite aligned with those of the sign. The buzzing sensation heightened until she started to slip through it, fading translucent again. She yelped, pulling away from the sign. What if I turn solid again when something’s in the middle of me, she thought. She frowned. She didn’t ever want to find out.

She wasn’t far from the subway entrance when, all of a sudden, a door opened near her. A drunk couple swaggered out together, arm in arm, chatting amiably. Tracer scrambled, slipping onto all fours to get into the nearest alleyway. Her tongue went dry. She could smell the cologne, the sweat, and more… the scent of blood from just underneath their skin. An agony of thirst shot through every nerve, exploding like glass shards being dragged through every blood vessel. She buckled over, then something else inside took over, pulling her up into a standing position once more. Tracer reached out, desperately digging her fingers into the wall next to her. It would only be an instant, a darker part of her whispered. Just a few steps further. The pain would all be over.

She shut her eyes hard, tears welling up. Her legs had started shaking again. She dug her fingers into the wall even harder. It was everything she could do to keep from running out and draining the two men in the middle of the street. One of them tripped, catching himself with one hand on the ground. He cursed lightly, shaking his hurt hand.

He’d cut it on a small piece of metal, Tracer realized barely an instant before the scent hit her like a steamroller. Against her will, one foot stepped in front of the other towards the corner of the alley. She kept her hand against the wall, digging in hard. Her eyes burned watching them, seeing their gentle heat against each other. The other one of them raised his hand, turned towards the street, waving down a cab. She was almost to the corner, where the alley reached the street’s sidewalk. She could hear each of their heartbeats, _see_ the subtle movement of their pulses, and worst of all, smell the rich undertones of blood that dripped from the wounded hand.

No! She thought. With the last of her willpower, she stopped her forward momentum, freezing her muscles in place. The cab pulled over, slowly approaching the men. Get in, get in, _get IN!_ she screamed at them in her head. Each muscle was taut, fiercely pulling against her frame. She felt like she was going to be torn apart. Her entire body was wracked with deep, shuddering pain.

When they disappeared into the cab, the spell was broken. Tracer dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She gasped for air, rough and harsh against her throat. Her muscles burned, and her fingertips stung as well. Moving only her eyes, she looked at her fingertips. They were should have been bloody, but were simply torn up instead. The tissues struggled to mend themselves back together before her eyes, dissolving like sand, hovering like a strange smoke, then coming back together again as injured fingertips once more. After a few times, the strange dissolution cycle stopped. Her injured fingers were solid once more.

She clenched her hand into a fist, then glanced up at the wall. She’d been gripping it, alright. Her fingers had gouged ten-foot-long slashes out of the brickwork as she’d walked forward. Then, in spite of the pain, her brain snatched onto those gouges, and her ruined fingertips.

_”What??_

She braced herself against the wall, curling up against it. Her throat burned and everything hurt, but the wall was solid, comforting, and _real._

And so was she.

Not a flicker of ghosting on her body.

Just as a smile began to form on her lips, a door slammed open near her. It was the door to the nightclub, opening once more to a whole group of college-age girls. The cacophony of voices looking for the next club, laughter, and heartbeats.

Tracer watched herself stand, whispering _no_ in her mind. Her hands weren’t listening to her anymore, hanging limp and numb at her side. The group was headed her way. In a moment, they’d be right in front of the alley. Tracer’s thirst exploded once more into a singular fire driving each inevitable step. She watched herself crouch, a horrified spectator to her own inner predator. Maybe one of the girls had mace, she thought hopefully. But hope drained from her quickly. Since her change, she’d snapped chains like pretzels, ripped metal doors of their hinges, and killed a fully armed and armored Talon agent with her bare hands. These girls had no chance. The lack of blood from her pierced lip, from her fingertips… she’d ignored it, but she knew deep down what it meant. Reaper had told her as much. Tracer had consumed the last of her own blood, and she was dying. These girls were going to save her life.

As the first one stepped into view, Tracer whispered a single, breathless word.

_“Help.”_

. . .

Widowmaker returned to observe the bell tower in secret. Sombra was confident. Overconfident. Content to watch her screens curled up in a newly-rented apartment, _grace à_ Talon, while the real world turned.

She sipped a vial of blood. She scowled at the now-empty vial, then clipped it back into its hidden compartment in her metal bracers. An irritating necessity.

Widowmaker suspended herself just below the ledge of a bank. Banks were perfect - always filled with alcoves, overhangs, and other architectural excesses. The wind streamed through her hair and she took a deep, slow breath. The cathedral stood before her, dark silhouette against a darker sky. The rest was routine: scanning the rooftops with exceptional care, identifying the best vantage points, and checking for any signs that anyone else was watching the area.

She lowered herself down to the next rooftop, and with a running leap soared across the chasm to land on the cathedral roof. She skidded to a halt on the slate, then launched herself upwards, grappling hook catching on the bell tower.

Two days had passed since Widowmaker had last shared this space with Tracer. No, with _Lena._ When Lena had disappeared, she wasn’t ready for the surge of panic in her chest. She’d pushed all of those feelings out of the way long ago. And yet, there they were all the same, scratching at the walls of the hidden room she’d left them in.

When she landed in the bell tower, she made sure to land with particular poise and grace. She looked around the inner tower with a hint of eagerness. Silence. Was Lena really not here? She reached into a pouch for her on miniature interface, pulling up Sombra’s map. Sure enough, the orange dot was steadily glowing a few feet from her location. She turned around and looked in the corner. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but an empty harness wasn’t one of them.

“Putain de merde!” she hissed, running a hand through her hair. Another wave of emotions. The harness had worked, making its way back to reality. But what about Tracer? She let the emotions pass, cooling herself down once more. She didn’t take another step. She looked down at the floor around the device. The floor below it was still covered in a fine layer of damp dust kicked up from the traffic mixed with the rain misting in from outside. She could see where it had landed, rolling forwards across the floor, coming to a stop in the corner.

Based on the trajectory, it had reappeared in the exact same place where it had vanished.

But, if it fell to the ground here, she thought, Tracer _couldn’t_ have been wearing it. She glanced around. Sure enough, the only footprints in the thin layer of mud here were her own.

She turned to the wall where she’d sat with the poor, hungry girl. She knelt, putting a hand against the floor there. She could see the scuff mark from Lena’s shoe where she’d just about stumbled into her. Widowmaker’s eyes softened, not quite a smile. Instead of trying to fix her life-saving harness immediately like any logical person would, Lena had thrown herself into solving the cover-up of her arch-nemesis’ murder.

“I bet you didn’t even stop to feed before going off to play detective,” Widowmaker said, shaking her head with a wry smile. “Well, with the exception of that one guard who made the exceptionally poor mistake of trying to corner you.” She laughed darkly, but then her smile faded. Lena. Her own hunger had been far worse when she was younger, and when healing her injuries. Lena should be no different, although she put up an impressive fight against her own nature when Widowmaker had first held her captive. She’d gone a day and a half refusing to drink anything but water before the thirst drove her to snap her own chains.

But now, it had been two days since she knew Tracer had gotten any blood, two days since she’d vanished into thin air. Two days… the longest Widowmaker had made it without feeding in her early months was four. By the fifth day, she found herself elbows-deep in disemboweling a human to suck the remaining blood directly out of their heart.

Not her prettiest meal, she mused. She looked down at the harness. What would Lena think of herself if she snapped like that? Widowmaker turned, regarding the largest bell in the middle of the tower, lost in thought. Her distorted reflection gazed back, skin an arctic blue, eyes a golden flame.

A few moments of grappling, and Widowmaker was perched once more in the bank alcove. Her view into the bell tower provided the best possible visibility. She’d wait here, holding vigil. If Tracer made it back, she’d be starving… but she wouldn’t be alone.

. . .

A week had passed. Widowmaker had long since installed herself in an unused office of the bank, tall windows giving an unsurpassed view of the cathedral. When Reaper arrived, Widowmaker accepted the delivery wordlessly. She opened the black insulated canvas sack, sorting the materials. Her own preferred blood mix for her own vials, and a combat ambulance worth of blood packs in the office’s refrigerator. A quiet worry nagged at her subconscious. A week without blood. What would that do to her?

“What’s this?” she asked, pulling out a small metallic box.

“A surveillance camera to watch the tower,” Reaper replied. “In case you decide to sleep.”

“Do surveillance cameras pick up ghosts?” she snapped. “What if she _almost_ gets here, and the camera misses it?”

Reaper observed her quietly from a corner. Then she made a gesture, _are you bugged?_

Reaper reached inside his jacket, feeling around. He paused, then pulled his gauntleted hand out again. He held something invisible between his metallic claws. With a gentle squeeze, the invisibility field broke. The metallic chip sparked for an instant, then resumed functioning. Widowmaker gestured at the surveillance camera. _What about that?_ Reaper shook his head.

“The camera’s old Overwatch tech we stole a few years ago. It’s pretty low-tech for Overwatch, to be honest, more like the sort of thing they decommissioned and threw into Blackwatch’s shed.”

“Overwatch tech? Is it traceable?” she hissed.

He laughed richly. “We’ve had it in storage for years, and they’ve never bothered to collect. The thing doesn’t even have a microphone.”

“But back to business.” He glanced at the device between his fingers. “I brought some songs for you. Even on a mission, it’s important to take breaks. Keeps you sharp. It’s where you get real insights. You like vintage French music?”

“That would be lovely,” Widowmaker replied, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

He flicked open a pocket interface device, opened the virtual controls, and pulled up a song.

A soft melody, minor key, filled the room. Reaper tucked the chip against the speaker, casually reaching over to the desk for a bit of tape to hold it down as the music played.

 _Je n'ai pas peur de la route_  
_Faudrait voir, faut qu'on y goûte_  
_Des méandres au creux des reins_  
_Et tout ira bien là_  
_Le vent nous portera_

He opened the refrigerator, nestling the pocket interface/surveillance chip between two blood packets. He closed the refrigerator door gently, music now barely audible from within. He turned his masked face back to the woman gazing intently out into the darkness beyond the glass. He looked over the room. Nothing was disturbed, aside from the station Widowmaker had set up for herself. Each time he’d come, she was in exactly the same position as before. A machine, single-minded with focus. She’d already returned to watch the cathedral tower through her scope. He took a slow breath, then exhaled.

“What is she to you, Widowmaker?” he asked.

She didn’t move, staring through her scope.

“She’s my mission.” she replied cooly.

“You took her in well _before_ she became your mission.”

Widowmaker sighed, setting her scope down. She placed the metal surveillance camera box against the window. It deployed an array of legs, clinging effortlessly to the glass. With a few metallic beeps, the camera was online, projecting a several close up images of the tower, infrared, electrostatic, and several others she was familiar with in her own visor. She turned towards the shadowy figure in the corner of the room.

With the push of a button, her visor opened. Her eyes fixed him against the wall.

“What about you? What’s she to _you,_ Reaper?”

“To Reaper?” He replied, “She’s a stubborn, resourceful opponent.”

Amelie raised an imperial eyebrow.

“And what was she to Reyes?”

They both held their ground. The faint music, muffled, was the only sound.

 _La caresse et la mitraille_  
_Et cette plaie qui nous tiraille_  
_Le palais des autres jours_  
_D'hier et demain_  
_Le vent les portera_

The soft stillness of the room held them both, as though in a trance. Her question hung suspended in the air. With glacial slowness, Reaper reached up to his mask. He unclipped one side, then the other. He slid the mask down from his face in a single, smooth motion. If anything, his face was more un-readable than his mask, shadowed by his hood as well as his thoughts. He fixed Widowmaker with his own sharp, inhuman eyes. She waited.

“She was a lively and unstoppable ally.” He replied after some time. “She had more energy than any of the rest of us combined. No matter what happened to her, she found a way to bounce back. She worked on a few of my strike teams back in the day. No, not Blackwatch,” the man said, noting Widowmaker’s eye twitch with a chuckle. “She was too good for that.”

He turned away casually, sitting down in an oversized desk chair.

“You know, there was only one time I really recall her upset in those days. It was one of our big galas. A white-tie affair, complete with chandeliers, flutes of champagne, and live orchestral music. Jack was as handsome as ever, charming a flock of UN officials with stories of Overwatch successes. He looked as good in a tux as he did in his combat uniforms,” he recalled with a half-smile, “but he was a little too much like Tracer. In the middle of a room of people like that, there are going to be ulterior motives. Looking back, it was a sea of rats. Even a few Talon faces, though I didn’t know it at the time. Ahh, but Jack… he just couldn’t help but see the best in people. I was there, not that anyone really saw me. Jack insisted upon having the highest security, after all, and even he had to admit that Blackwatch was the best of the best. After enough of the kind of battles Blackwatch does, though, we don’t look quite so good in front of a camera,” he said, gesturing to his face. “We wore our tuxes and gowns, but stuck to the shadows between pillars, watching. I got to watch something interesting that day.

“Gérard had arrived, all smiles and camaraderie, black hair slicked back and impeccable. They all welcomed him, made jokes, and laughed together. His wife, lovely as ever, floated down the stairs behind him. Her face was a perfect smile. Even when he reached out for her arm, tugging her next to him, she held onto her smile. Even when her arm was turning white where he gripped it.”

Widowmaker frowned.

“I was about to step in when someone else did it for me. She must have seen it, too, with the way she rushed towards the woman. What will she do, I wondered to myself, as she slid up next to her. Well, the girl leaned in and started up a conversation, that’s what. I overheard her asking something about ballet, and an autograph for her girlfriend. She chattered away until finally Gérard released his wife’s arm to go talk with the rest of his entourage undisturbed. For the rest of that evening, anytime Gérard came around to gather up his wife, he found her in the impenetrable bubble of non-stop chit chat from our top pilot, Lena Oxton.” The man’s voice rumbled with amusement. Then, he continued.

“When the ball ended, my team and I did a thorough perimeter sweep. Nothing sadder than a hall post-gala. The staff had cleared away the plates, but the rest would be left for the morning, like a half-deflated balloon.

“When I got to the balcony, I was surprised to see one guest who hadn’t left yet. She stood there, looking down at the gardens below, brow drawn up in a look of sad concern. It was such a foreign emotion on her face. Even when Oxton noticed me, she couldn’t shake that pensive look. I spoke with her briefly. You know, after an entire night of watching political games, she was the first person who looked me in the eye with honesty. I thought that would be all of it, but then, just before she left, she turned and asked me about the sweet woman she’d spent the evening with. Did I know what was bothering her? Could I keep an eye out for her? I gave her my word that I would.”

His face was sincere. He seemed to look straight through Widowmaker’s calm mask and into the emotions underneath.

“Now, we know what Tracer is to Widowmaker.” He stepped out of his chair, walking over to the window. “But I wonder… what is she to Amélie?”

Tears welled up in Widowmaker’s eyes, threatening to spill onto her cheeks. He turned away, politely pretending not to notice. He reached for his mask, clipping it back in place.

“I think that’s a question that you’ll need to answer for yourself.” He finished, quietly. He reached over to the refrigerator, opening the door once more. The sound of the music filled the room, then faded down the hallway as he left Widowmaker with her thoughts.

 _Ce parfum de nos années mortes_  
_Ce qui peut frapper à ta porte_  
_Infinité de destins_  
_On en pose un et qu'est-ce qu'on en retient?_  
_Le vent l'emportera_

“Thank you for the music,” she said after him.

His voice crackled through the comm link headset in response.

“You’re welcome.”

. . .

Eleven days had passed.

Widowmaker’d had plenty of time to consider Reaper’s question.

The sky was thick with clouds, and Widowmaker had next to no visibility of the tower thanks to the rain. Lightning crackled, burning out her night vision, leaving her blinking hard in irritation until she could see properly again.

What was Lena to Amélie? Before that, what is _Widowmaker_ to Amélie? Widowmaker had remade herself after being destroyed by Overwatch, in body and in reputation alike. So had Reaper. Their old names were just aliases now, shadows of their past lives. How could you avenge a shadow? It was an empty victory at best. Even Overwatch itself seemed tied to that same cycle of destruction and resurrection. Reaper had torn it down, and yet here it is again, returned as a warped version of itself.

Lightning struck again, close to the tower. Widowmaker winced, waiting for her vision to return. Her thoughts kept her company.

Plenty of things had changed when Amélie’d died. The thought that her husband cared for her at all, for one thing. That he’d never _really_ hurt her. That he might change, and be like the man she’d fallen in love with again. She scoffed. She’d put all her hope in the wrong places.

That gala had been the closest thing she’d felt to freedom in a long time. Normally, her husband hated the thought of her walking around an event on her own. He was a furnace of jealousy. But who could question the motives of someone like Lena? Not even him. She revelled in each story Lena told, every joke, every light-hearted story. Like Reaper had said, her bubble was impenetrable. Right until she had to leave. Call me if you want to go watch some ballet with me and my girlfriend in London, she’d said as she passed along her number. She’d had to drop it casually into the garbage as she left - her husband was always suspicious of numbers - but she appreciated the thought. Widowmaker held that memory close to her heart.

What was Lena to Amélie?

A friend in a time of need.

Sudden realizations came crashing down on her. No wonder she was messing things up from the get-go. She was approaching her as Widowmaker, traitor, and playful nemesis. The taunting, the games… those were all Widowmaker’s, aimed at Tracer. She wasn’t realizing that she might be injuring Lena, too.

Idiot, she thought at herself.

Another crack of lightning, and she could have sworn she heard Lena cry out. She stared out the window. Nothing.

It occurred to Widowmaker then that Lena was no stranger to resurrections with costs. She was no blind innocent, but a tenacious fighter. Returning from the Slipstream incident left her intangible unless she wore an anchor to reality. She’d misunderstood the purpose of the harness device at first - it wasn’t a time-machine, but a lifeline, a rescue vest that she could never remove again. Then, later, after countless resurrections from that doctor, that dangerous cocktail left a permanent dark legacy.

Dr. Zeigler knew all too well that no resurrection comes without a cost. She was no stranger to sacrifice. She relied on Overwatch for her research. Field research with minimal oversight. Widowmaker laughed. It was perfect for the good doctor. What would she be willing to do to bring it back?

Anything.

But there was the big mystery: what was the true cost of Overwatch’s resurrection? What blood money did it have to consume, now that legal sources had vanished?

A sudden movement caught her eye. Someone was in the cemetery. Her heart stilled.

_“Lena,”_

The woman was partly translucent, a ghost with hair slicked back in the rain. She stumbled. Her skin color… she was clearly starving. Day was fast approaching, and she had pulled herself alongside a crypt. She was laughing. Widowmaker cursed, rushing to grab blood packets. She needs to feed before she goes fully insane, she thought to herself in a rush. Collect the supplies, then get out to her.

The camera was the last thing. Useless as it was in the rain, it still helped her get sleep on other days.

She reached out for the camera, then pulled back just in time. The glass behind it split in half. It was a clean, perfect cut, severing the camera neatly in two. A green blade hummed dangerously close to her cheek as she dove backwards. The rest of the window shattered, and the cyborg drove his body through the glass with a kick. Widowmaker dodged to the left, kick grazing her shoulder, pushing her off-balance as she rolling into the fall.

He was fast. Block to the left. Shoot to get space. His sword cut through the air. She leaped over him, landing behind him and sweeping her leg to knock him off balance. He jumped out of the way, swiping his blade downward. She raised her rifle to shoot again, but hesitated. She knew that pose; he’d knock her bullets straight back at her. She’d seen him do it with other Talon guards. She overturned a bookshelf into him instead. Let’s see you parry banking ledgers, she thought grimly. He straightened up in surprise as entire set of leather-bound volumes tumbled towards him. He sliced through each one cleanly, perfectly. This wasn’t his usual intensity. No. He was angry.

This was bad.

She had to get out.

She tossed a venom mine on the windowsill, then leaped into a backwards swan dive out through the broken window. Genji chased after her. Papers from the ruined books fluttered around him like, triggering her mine. She couldn’t watch the results. She took aim with her grappling hook, releasing it towards a column. It caught, just as Genji leapt out of the window, blade out. He was going to try to cut her line.

She released the hook, falling once more. Genji swept his blade, just barely missing it as it whizzed downward with the falling Widowmaker. He caught hold of the building, waiting.

Widowmaker took aim again, this time catching on to one of the lower pillars. She slowed her descent some, pulling up into a wide arch. Was he alone? Regardless, she had to get him away from Lena’s location.

“Reaper,” she called out in her comm. “I’ve got company.”

The wind was knocked out of her as the cyborg landed a kick on her side.

“Where is she!” Genji shouted.

Widowmaker twisted away from him in mid-air, snapping his chin back with a high kick. He recovered quickly, grabbing onto her leg just as she’d grappled the next building. She aimed her rifle down at him, firing off a few shots. He let go, landing on a lightpole. She swung forward to the next building. Onward and onward, she thought. Keep following. He launched himself back at her, blade extended.

Widowmaker snapped herself upward, flipping gracefully to take aim with her rifle again. How had he gotten that close? He kicked the rifle out of her hands. Only then did she look more closely at her grappling hook - Genji hadn’t missed it at all. The cut hook finally gave way, sending Widowmaker falling several stories down to the street below.

Impact was brutal, even though she rolled with the landing. Ribs cracked. She coughed up blood, grimacing. Her visor had shattered, sending lenses rolling down the sidewalk. Luckily for her, she’d been drinking regularly. Her fangs were hidden away as the cyborg landed on top of her, sword at her throat.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” he said slowly. “Where. Is. Tracer.” He emphasized each word with a slight prodding of his sword against her skin.

She pictured Tracer. The last moment she’d seen her, she had managed to get the crypt door open and slip inside, closing it tightly behind her.

“She’s safe,” Widowmaker murmured. They were miles from the cathedral now. The blade crackled next to her neck, but she could only feel relief. Lena was a fighter. Even without her help, she’d find a way to make it through.

She’d bounce back. She always did.

Widowmaker closed her eyes.

As the sky warmed with dawn, a hint of a smile touched her lips.

It was nothing like Amelie's old smiles, and nothing like the sneers she delivered as Widowmaker. It was a true, honest smile.

As the blade pushed closer against her throat, the final verse of a song floated back up into her memory.

 _Pendant que la marée monte_  
_Et que chacun refait ses comptes_  
_J'emmène au creux de mon ombre_  
_Des poussières de toi_  
_Le vent les portera_  
_Tout disparaîtra mais_  
_Le vent nous portera_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Le Vent Nous Portera, by Noir Désir.
> 
> Other good songs for Widowmaker in this chapter: Spiderlegs, by Danny Malone.


	7. Self-Restraint

Tracer stepped forward towards the group of girls. Her throat was dry, and felt like it was coated in ash. Each step was a battle. She was getting weaker. Weaker with each step. The girls were so close. The dawn was close, too. Tracer felt it. Sun against the horizon, blood in the veins. She could feel each heartbeat. Images of herself tearing into the girls rose, unbidden, in her mind’s eye. They wouldn’t stand a chance.  
  
“Help,” whispered Tracer.  
  
The girls had gotten too close. One of them swept a hand through her air, wafting the scent of her youthful blood towards Tracer. Tracer’s fangs throbbed. Her eyes burned.  
  
She crouched, then lunged.  
  
Directly into the light of the rising sun.  
  
Tracer arched backward out of the leap in pain, flames erupting from the contact point between the sunlight and her bare skin. The girls screamed, scattering into the street. One of them dropped a clutch purse. Another lost a shoe. Tracer landed on her side in the street, skidding hard. She arched her back and screamed as the fire burned across her face. She flipped herself around, shielding her eyes.

Her mind was aflame. Instinct carried her. She pulled her feet under her, then half-ran, half crawled back to the shadowed alley.

The instant she was out of the sun, the flames choked away, like a candle being starved of oxygen, leaving thin plumes of smoke pouring from her exposed, blackened skin. The cool shadow slid across her skin. She felt it rather than saw it – her eyes were useless, as her eyelids were burned shut.

Gasping, Tracer collapsed back against a dumpster.

She leaned against the cool metal. The scent of burning skin stung her nose. She braced herself against the dumpster and the wall, waiting for her heartbeat to start up again. Shuddering, she tried to lift on arm up to her face. She heard flakes of ash, and the crunch of charred skin trying to unbend at the elbow. Oddly, she was beyond pain.

Beyond the pain, she felt something else.

Relief.

Tracer hadn’t killed any innocents.

They’d go home, all of them, back to their lives. Back to girlfriends, boyfriends, families.

Tracer coughed weakly. Dust stirred in her lungs. Her heart still hadn’t started again. Her mind began to drift. Flashes of her past at Overwatch, a moment of her childhood, her first date, her last date. Time meant nothing in her flashbacks. First, she was at her 5th birthday party, and then time sped forward again to her first meeting with Amélie at a stuffy Overwatch gala. Next, she was back learning how to fly her first plane, and then forward further to watching Amélie become a monster named Widowmaker, and then forward once more to hints of Amélie bleeding through the monster’s facade. Her brain played through any memories it found. She was unraveling.  
  
And then, in the shade of the alley, a voice rang out.  
  
“Thirsty?”

. . .

Widowmaker closed her eyes, smiling faintly as Genji’s blade hummed against her throat.

“Good work, Genji, Now stand down,” said a new woman. “We’re taking her in.”

Widowmaker’s eyes flashed open. The dawn was almost breaking, hurting her eyes. The woman wore a Valkyrie suit, and Widowmaker recognized her immediately.

A cargo vehicle pulled up alongside, hovering low. No windows, thought Widowmaker. Good. Genji held the point of his blade right between her shoulder blades as she walked into the back of the vehicle. She almost laughed. She couldn’t have chosen a better vehicle. She was in no shape to put up a fight, but she’d be far worse if Angela had left her in the sun. She locked eyes with Angela just as the door closed.

Your timing is interesting indeed, doctor, she thought.

The door locked shut just as the first rays of the sun flowed over the horizon. Widowmaker would have some time to contemplate it while she sat in the darkness of the cargo container, being driven to some location.

Time to contemplate, and time to begin to heal her injuries in the slow, subtle way.

. . .  
  
The voice echoed on the hard surfaces of the alley.

Tracer tried to turn her head to look towards the speaker. The skin of her face and neck was also scorched, and resisted the movement.  
  
“No need to move,” said the voice. “Just drink.”  
  
A hand cupped something against her lips, tipping it back. The liquid was smooth and thick, with the overpowering coppery scent of blood.  
  
Images of the girls struggling beneath her flooded her mind once more.  
  
She struggled weakly. However, the instant the blood hit her throat, she started swallowing hard, nearly choking on it. Each gulp brought the pain back, flowing through her as her nerves came back to life. But soon, a new fire quickly took its place. She downed the vial, and was immediately offered another. And another after that. She could feel her molecules rearranging, flowing across her skin and burned muscle tissues. Tracer reached blindly for a fourth vial, and was pushed away.  
  
“Don’t be greedy now,” said the voice. “I only have so many of these in reserve.”  
  
Tracer coughed weakly, then lowered her arm. She could feel a warm tingling sensation move along her skin as the molecules finished realigning in her arms. The two of them waited in silence.  
  
“You’re a rare specimen, you know. You’re rare insofar as you’re _alive_ , given you have all the survival instincts grasshopper in a frying pan.”  
  
Tracer arched back into the wall, gritting her teeth. Her face was shifting as the skin repaired itself.  
  
“Jumped right out and landed in the fire.”  
  
Tracer gasped as her mouth reformed from a black cloud of ash.  
  
“I’m referring to the sunbathing.”

Her skin was settling down. Tracer reached her hands up to feel her cheeks, her forehead.

“Although it _is_ rather adorable watching the learning process. What will she do next? Stake herself through the heart in a freak gardening mishap? Decapitate herself by slipping on an ill-placed banana peel? But no, instead you go and starve yourself.”

The woman began to pace along the alley. “I’ve got bad news,” she said, walking away from Tracer. “You’ve got self-restraint, my dear. And, tragically, self-restraint is rather lethal to our kind.”  
  
As the blood worked its way through her limbs, her brain wrestled with the stranger’s words. The voice, the accent… both familiar.  
  
“Who are you?” said Tracer, voice becoming louder as her lungs healed from within.  
  
“An old friend of someone you know,” said the voice. “She’s a doctor from Overwatch, which, rumor has it, has been reviving itself as of late.”    
  
“Angela?”  
  
“Oh excellent, you’re familiar with her! I’d hoped as much. If you’re tired of fighting against your new body, I do believe she’s the only person alive who could help you now.

“And by the way,” the woman said, turning briefly back towards Tracer, “do send the good doctor my regards. She may well assume I sent you, after all. She knows I’m a big fan of her work.”

And then, without another word, the strange woman was gone.

. . .

Tracer was never more grateful for a dumpster. As the sun began to crest into the alleyway, she was sheltered safely within its darkness. There hadn’t been time to find another safe house, nor could she follow the mystery woman without risking her life.

“I don’t even mind the smell,” she whispered, patting the sturdy metal wall.

The mystery woman was disturbing. Her eyes had never healed enough to get more than a general impression of her before she left, but her voice resonated in her skull. Could Angela really help her now? Widowmaker had made it sound like Angela had caused the whole problem, but if the doctor hadn’t realized the potential side-effects…

Tracer rolled onto her other side, pushing the debris into a sort of pillow.

If Angela hadn’t realized the side-effects, would she even recognize them? The blue skin from blood deprivation, the slowed heart rate, the golden eyes; all of these things had just become the mark of Widowmaker. And the sifting, sand-like dissolution in her hands when they tried to heal was disturbingly like Reaper’s own sifting, smoky form. Would she be pleased at how well the healing worked, without her medical assistance? There wasn’t even a hint of the burn now.

As soon as the sun was no longer lighting up the alley, Tracer crawled back out of the dumpster. It was still several hours before sundown, but Tracer wasn’t willing to wait. Tracer had realized that morning - painfully - that although direct sunlight burned, she was safe in the shadows even during the daylight hours. She could walk in the shadows until then. She needed to figure out how to get to Angela. And, if she snuck into the closest re-opened Overwatch base, she’d have the only shot she’d get at finding the files related to Amélie’s death. She still needed to find out who had covered it up, and why.

Yes, she needed to get into Overwatch, even if she looked like an enemy now.

And damn. She _did_ look like an enemy.

She could see that her hands were still blue-toned, and a glance at her reflection in a broken mirror shard confirmed that she had yellow-gold eyes as well. Her hair was a mess. She ran her fingers through it, trying to coax it into shape, hoping that she might at least look a little more like the normal Tracer if she found her friends again. She paused, then let her hands drop to her sides. A pit formed in her stomach.

Who would trust her like this? The vials of blood had helped heal up her burns, but she was still a bit hungry, still dangerous. She pushed against the wall, testing her alignment with this reality. Her hand pushed slightly through it, but with some resistance. She focused on her hunger, and the wall became more solid.

Tracer took note of that.

Before she left the alley, Tracer took some time to look for clues from her unexpected savior. The mystery woman had somehow managed to leave without leaving any clues. No footprints. She’d taken the vials which she might have otherwise left fingerprints on. Her only clue really was that she seemed to know Angela, so if Tracer could get to her, she might know who the woman was. Beyond that, the woman seemed to know far too much, and be far too prepared.

Tracer could feel her mind trailing off into conspiracy theories. She shook her head, frowning. No, she thought, this isn’t the time for wild speculation. We need to solve one thing at a time, and chances are, Amélie’s “death” cover-up will lead to finding the source of the slow blood tainting. Although Widowmaker had insisted it was from Angela’s staff, could someone else have fed her the bio-medical-voodoo that ended up making Tracer and Widowmaker what they were now?

In other words, what if it wasn’t Angela’s fault?

Either way, the cover-up was the key. That’s what Tracer’s gut was telling her, and her instincts rarely lead her awry. She had to get into the nearby Overwatch base, even though she had been missing/dead for days and would return looking like a corrupted Talon agent.

Who would trust her? The question resurged in her mind.

Widowmaker.

But she had no way to contact Widowmaker.

She stood near the subway opening for a few minutes, debating with herself. Then, she made up her mind. Just as she was about to head out, she made an impulsive stop. She passed by a greasy corner grocery unit. It was unmanned, like they all were in this area, and she walked in and helped herself to a bag of flour, cocoa powder, a make-up brush, and clear packaging tape.

It took her less time than she thought to get to the old LaCroix apartment, thanks to the sunless subway system. The sun was low enough in the afternoon that she could even safely walk close to the buildings as she made her way there after the subway trip. A few more moments and she was back up at the window, crawling into the apartment. 

Everything was as she’d left it. The torn paper that she’d scattered to try and find the invisible woman, to the items she’d disturbed in their fight. Hopefully she hadn’t disturbed too much. It was a long shot, she thought, but she could at least rule out an unintelligent cover-up. She walked over to the angel. She pulled out the cocoa powder, dusting it over the statue, then removing the excess powder carefully. She took out her clear tape and lifted the fingerprints, taping them down onto a nearby piece of paper. She folded it up, placing it in her pocket. If the person was a pro, all she’d find would be her own, Amélie, and Gérard’s prints. She wiped down the statue carefully when she was done. With more time, she’d lift more prints, but even these would be useless without Overwatch’s international database of fingerprints.

Next, she moved a painting aside and plucked the hexagonal chip from the place where she’d hidden it several nights before. She held it out, took a breath, and pressed the button in the chip.

There was a buzz of static, then a voice.

“The hell… it’s _you?_ ” said the invisible woman’s voice from through the chip. She mumbled something in Spanish. 

“Yes, it’s me,” Tracer replied. “Look, I’ve given it a lot of thought. And, well,” she closed her eyes, sighing. “Well, I’m gonna take you up on your offer.”

Tracer gripped the hexagonal chip. Hopefully the woman believed her; she was the only connection Tracer had to Talon, and by extension, to Widowmaker. There was no way she’d lead Talon to Overwatch’s headquarters, but she probably couldn’t even make it in without Widowmaker’s help.

Was she really starting to trust Widowmaker?

Tracer smiled.

Maybe she was.

. . .

After a few minutes, the invisible woman appeared. She’d tried to show up mysteriously, but Tracer had spread flour in ample proportions across all surfaces in the apartment.

“Hi, Invisible Woman,” said Tracer, addressing the cloud of flour.

“It’s Sombra,” she said irritably, removing her now-rendered-useless invisibility cloaking while wiping white dust off of her shoulders.

“ _The_ Sombra?” asked Tracer.

“The one and only,” said Sombra. She coughed. “Now, how can we help each other out?”

Tracer eyed her warily. Sombra flicked her hair back out of her eyes, adjusting the collar of her shirt. “You see how I didn’t bring a gun or anything? I’m just here to talk.” Sombra said.

“Alright then.” Tracer took a breath. “I’ll take you up on your offer to help me get into the Overwatch compound. You’re right that they wouldn’t trust me, looking like this.” Tracer gestured at herself. “We’ll need Widowmaker’s help to get into the compound. We need her eyes on the guards while we get in.”

Sombra looked down, taking a breath. She raised an eyebrow. “Look, to be honest I really didn’t think you’d call, and frankly, it’s pretty clear you’ve got no intention of just giving me the location of the base. You’re no traitor, and you’d hate for them to think you were one.” Sombra turned away, looking out the window, then looked back over her shoulder. “What are you actually wanting to talk about here?”

Tracer looked up at Sombra sharply.

“You’ve got a terrible poker face, Lena Oxton.” Sombra shrugged. “I mean, you _really, really_ do. You do this whole… _thing_ with your face when you’re not completely honest.” She gestured with both hands, idly pointing to her general face area. Then she turned back towards Tracer, inspecting her own nails nonchalantly. “And anyway, we don’t even need your help to find the base now that Widowmaker’s tracker is there. So… what else do you have to offer?”

Tracer leaned in. “Widowmaker’s _tracker_ is there? Does that mean she’s at the compound then?”

“Yeah. Your people won the day or whatever. We got her distress signal, but couldn’t get to her in time. They’ve got her in their custody.”

“Shit!”

“No kidding. But she can hold her own until we’re able to make an opening for her to escape.”

The world started swimming around Tracer. She hadn’t expected this.

“How long have they had her?” Tracer asked.

“Since sometime this morning.”

Tracer turned away, putting her head in her hands, pacing faster. Then she slowed, and looked a long time at the statue of the angel with a scythe, and then at the abstract art on the wall. They’ve got Widowmaker. Tracer took a slow breath. Determination flowed across her face as she turned around and faced Sombra. Sombra looked back hard at her, studying her.

“Oh my god. You’re actually going to try come with us, aren’t you?” said Sombra.

Tracer didn’t know how, exactly, but she could tell that the sun had just passed beyond the horizon.

“Yeah,” she said grimly. “Looks like I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience on this update. Life has been rough - bad medical diagnoses for loved ones, mental and emotional health struggles for myself, and suddenly packing up and moving to a different location in the middle of fall. It means a lot to me that there are still people who are looking forward to the next update, and I'm glad to be back in the story groove again.


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